Ever since the day the carriage bearing the Prisce crest faded behind the treeline, time inside the small house seemed to thicken.
There were no more frantic knocks on the door at dawn. No more bright laughter or noisy teasing echoing from the yard. The atmosphere, always quiet to begin with, grew hollow. Cassius, Thomas, and Emily were forced to fall back into their old, mundane rhythm.
Three weeks after Eliana's departure, the first letter from the capital finally arrived.
Cassius carefully peeled open the wax seal. The scent of expensive ink and fragrant parchment drifted up, feeling entirely out of place in their rustic home.
Eliana's handwriting was elegant yet full of energy, covering both sides of the paper. She wrote about the imposing castles in the capital and the giant libraries that Emily would surely adore. She detailed lavish tea parties and the new noble friends she had met at the academy. Everything in the letter sounded brilliant, dazzling, and incredibly distant.
'A completely different world' Cassius thought, his fingers lightly tracing the crisp edge of the paper.
He was genuinely happy she was enjoying a good life. But trailing right behind that relief was an indescribable emptiness. An invisible distance was slowly stretching between them, measured in royal academies and noble banquets.
He pulled out a chair, sat at the desk, and took out paper and a pen.
Dipping the nib into the inkpot, Cassius carefully selected each word. He wrote about his tedious daily chores, reassuring her that everything at home remained perfectly fine. And finally, he added how much he missed her.
Folding the letter, he set it neatly at the corner of the desk to take to the post office the next morning. He assumed everything would continue to drift by peacefully.
Yet a few days later, that fragile tranquility was brutally shattered.
His sleep was cut short by a heavy thud. The mattress beside him shook violently.
Cassius snapped his eyes open. Emily was convulsing. Her hands frantically clawed at the bedsheet, her small face contorted in pure agony.
"Emily!" Cassius bolted upright, the remaining sleep instantly vanishing from his mind.
His shout woke Thomas in the bed across the room. Realizing something was horribly wrong, the older man rushed over.
Emily lay curled up, her back arched unnaturally. Thomas pressed a hand to her forehead, only to recoil as if burned. The girl's body radiated a scorching heat, her skin flushed crimson from a terrifyingly high fever.
Yet that was not the worst of it.
Pitch-black veins began to bulge violently beneath her skin. Starting from below her collarbone, they webbed upward in intricate branches all the way to her neck. They looked exactly like poisonous roots strangling her airway. It was suffocating and horrific to witness.
Emily rambled incoherently in delirium. Her breath came in broken, heart-wrenching gasps.
"Water! Cassius, get warm water quickly!" Thomas's voice cracked, his hands trembling uncontrollably as he clumsily grabbed a clean cloth nearby.
Cassius's legs carried him in a frantic dash to the kitchen. When he returned with a basin of warm water, Thomas hastily dipped the cloth, wrung it out, and repeatedly wiped the sweat from Emily's forehead and neck.
Catching the utter panic in Thomas's eyes, Cassius realized a cruel truth. That terrible, unknown illness had relapsed. And these were no ordinary pains.
Now, this was the worst outbreak she had ever suffered.
Watching Emily writhe on the bed, Cassius gritted his teeth and turned to the older man. "I'm going to find Lord Leopold."
He charged straight out into the freezing night.
Lungs burning, he ran headlong toward the Prisce estate. He did not expect the Marquess to know how to cure this illness; no ordinary physician could ever manage that. He only hoped the noble had something, anything that might ease Emily's suffering right now.
Leopold acted swiftly.
Only a short while later, the Prisce family's finest physicians arrived at the small house in a desperate rush, hauling dozens of heavy medicine chests. The cramped room instantly grew thick with the bitter, sharp smell of medicinal herbs.
"In the past, she just gritted her teeth and endured it until the pain receded on its own" Thomas explained tensely, his hands wringing his crumpled coat hem. "But this time the severity of the pain is beyond endurance. Please, you have to help her."
The physicians sweated profusely in the cold room. They employed all kinds of expensive painkillers, and a few even began channeling mana to soothe her spasming muscles.
It took effect, but only minimally. Emily's moans grew slightly softer and her body loosened up a fraction, yet those hideous black veins on her neck refused to disappear. They remained right there beneath her skin, stubborn and malicious.
After several agonizing hours, the chief physician sighed, shook his head, and stepped back.
They could not cure the root cause. Emily's condition was unlike any normal illness or physical injury they had ever encountered. Leaving behind a pile of sedative vials, the medical team packed up their equipment and left in sheer helplessness.
Thomas was utterly exhausted. He sat slumped on the kitchen doorstep, dry coughing fits occasionally echoing into the hallway.
Cassius slipped off his shoes, climbed onto the mattress, and wrapped his arms entirely around Emily's trembling frame. He transferred his body heat to her, a fragile gesture, but it was all he could offer to warm her freezing limbs.
He reached over to grab the knight novel Eliana had once given her.
"In a dark forest..." Cassius's voice grew hoarse, cracking at every word. He tried to read loudly and slowly, desperately clinging to the hope that these dreamy tales might distract her from the physical agony tearing through her body.
Emily kept her eyes shut tight. Sweat drenched her pale forehead as she weakly buried her face into his chest.
'I'm completely useless'
Cassius bit the inside of his lip hard enough to taste copper. He could use mana. He bore a surname that could strike terror into the hearts of the continent's highest nobility. Yet in the end, he was still just a helpless kid, watching with wide eyes as his loved one suffered torment. Guilt and pure frustration clawed at his chest.
The night deepened into the late hours.
Exhaustion, mixed with extreme mental pressure, finally broke his endurance. Cassius's head drooped against the edge of the pillow as he drifted off, yet his fingers remained tightly intertwined with Emily's frail hand.
A long while later. From the darkest corner of the room, a shadow detached itself.
Rimi leaped softly onto the bed without a single sound. The silent steps of a predator glided lightly over the thick quilt.
The plump black cat stopped at the foot of the bed. In the dark, its yellow eyes flashed with a sharp, profound intelligence.
Rimi stared at Emily's battered body, her gaze tracing those horrific black veins suffocating Eliana's life away. Then, she slowly turned its head, casting a long glance at Cassius's exhausted, sleeping face.
She knew precisely what was happening. She knew exactly why the fragile body of this mortal girl kept collapsing so miserably.
Rimi let out a soft sigh through her nose. Her black tail swished lightly through the chill air. Silently turning around, the cat leaped off the edge of the bed, slipped out through the slightly open window, and melted into the quiet night.