BLINK! BLINK! BLINK!
Each blink was intentional, full of purpose, as Lucius slowly returned to control of his breath, his mind, his body. That endless sea of darkness he'd been trapped in—where time, pain, and thought had all twisted together—taught him a valuable lesson. Or two. Patience and tolerance. Both were traits Lucius had already grown to understand in his short life… but now, under circumstances beyond human endurance, he had unwillingly mastered them.
Lucius became aware of something else, too—something that jolted him more than the silence, more than the numbness. His left eye, the only one he still had, had developed a blind spot in the lower-right corner. Panic took hold of him immediately, his breath hitched as three terrifying seconds passed—seconds that stretched like eternity. For those moments, he thought he'd lost even that final gift. Thankfully, it faded. The blur retreated, the panic subsided—but it left behind a scar of fear, one that clung tightly to his chest.
'Guess even the Goddess of Time and Continuity is enjoying this poor man's suffering...' he muttered internally, dryly, as he began taking stock of his surroundings.
He was on a soft, cushioned bed. The kind reserved for someone important or badly wounded. A muted comfort greeted his back, wrapped in thick layers of bandages and cold medicinal wraps. His body was covered entirely in healing ointments and dressings, their herbal aroma strong and bitter, yet oddly soothing. The smell filled the room. For some reason, it felt like a smell he could trust.
Gently, Lucius attempted to move. He started with his left hand, his fingers twitching obediently. Then his toes, his legs. Each limb answered his commands with aching hesitation. Each muscle felt like it had been twisted, scorched, and stitched back into place by some cruel god's hand—but they moved. They moved except for his right arm.
There was nothing there.
That weight, or rather the absence of it, returned like a whisper across his nerves. A phantom limb. He didn't need to look to remember. His mind had already accepted the loss; it was the body that still hadn't caught up.
He wasn't paralysed—that was the silver lining, if one could call it that. But whatever sense of relief he found in that realisation vanished just as fast, consumed by the next wave of pain.
A fresh tide of agony surged across his body—electric, stabbing, heat-born suffering. The kind that twisted through his joints like vines of static fire, twitching each nerve fibre violently. The worst of it hit his face.
As Zero Dawn had warned, the pain from the Chimaera's final attack was still there. Still real. The sensation of burning, of melting skin—it had returned with a vengeance. Not dulled. Not faded. Renewed. As if his face was being peeled away inch by inch, layer by layer, and replaced with raw, open nerves under fire.
And yet, he bore it.
He had to.
He activated his mana sense, slow and strained. A sonar technique—one he had used before, instinctively, back in the wilderness, against that Valgura. The wave expanded gently. A pulse. A quiet, mental scan. He could feel the space around him—large, surprisingly vast for a medical chamber. Private, too. No movement. No footsteps. Just him.
Lucius didn't care for the architecture or structure. Not really. What was the use? The room could be a palace, and it wouldn't lessen the pain. The walls would still bear silent witness to his suffering. Watching. Never helping.
Time passed. How much, he wasn't sure.
But eventually, it broke him. Not physically—emotionally. Slowly, painfully, Lucius began to hum. Not a tune, not a melody—just soft, stifled cries. Weak, pathetic sounds that escaped from his throat without permission. Humming was all he could do. He didn't want to scream, not again, even though he was no longer capable of such simple ways to cope with his inner agony.
His tears followed suit, streaming freely from his only eye. His nose, too, began to run, completing the portrait of quiet human wreckage. His body had reached its limit. Not because he lacked strength. But because even the strongest breaks, if left alone with pain for long enough.
And in that moment, Lucius was, all alone. He was just a boy again. Small. Scarred. Crying silently into the sheets of a world that may have given him another chance at life, but refused to grant him peace or a moment's rest, as hours passed away, slowly, but thankfully, surely.
***
"The little one… lives." A voice revealed itself as Lucius remained still beneath the soft white curtain of blankets, unmoving, too still, perfectly straight as if carved in place. He tried, unsuccessfully, to mimic the coma-like state he'd just awoken from, hoping to fool whoever entered. But the voice that echoed through the room wasn't random—it was meant for him. Lucius could tell. It was familiar. Direct. Unapologetically loud enough for him to hear.
"You don't say." His voice, rough and cracked, broke through the silence as the blankets slid off his face and collarbone, revealing the state he was in. His face was wrapped in heavy gauze, delicate layers of healing bandages covering the worst of his wounds. His neck, too, was restrained, sleek medical rolls wrapped tightly around it, restricting even the slightest movement.
Lucius's single eye remained locked on the ceiling—he couldn't turn to look. But he didn't need to. He knew the source of that voice. Adrianna. She stood by the entrance of the room, positioned at the lower-right corner of his field of vision. She hadn't moved yet, as if giving him time to speak first, or maybe to settle into the weight of her presence.
But Adrianna knew him. Knew what his injuries meant. Knew how much it hurt just to shift. Without a word, she crossed the room and took a seat beside his bed—on his right—settling quietly into the chair as though it were a throne beside a broken king.
Her hand reached out and wrapped softly around his left forearm. It wasn't a tight grip, just... present. Careful. Warm. There was an affection in her touch that Lucius hadn't expected. Especially not from Adrianna. Not toward him. Not like this. Not even now.
"Sam—Same pinch," Lucius murmured, the corner of his lips twitching upward. His thumb gently pressed against the skin below her index finger, a feeble motion filled with dry humour and too much honesty.
It was a shared joke between two broken warriors. Two survivors. Both are missing a limb now. He wasn't sure which war she'd lost hers to—the rebellion? The blood wars? The border siege? His memory was hazy. It didn't matter. Loss recognised loss.
Adrianna chuckled softly, her voice lower than usual, gentler somehow. Lucius tried to laugh too—a short-lived attempt at mirroring her mood—but pain retaliated viciously. A white-hot jolt ripped through his core, forcing fresh blood to burst from his mouth and nose.
Adrianna was on her feet instantly. No hesitation. No gasp. Just motion. She darted to the side table, grabbed the nearest cloth, and returned in a single, fluid movement. Her hands were efficient, but her touch was gentle as she wiped the blood from his face.
For a brief second, their eyes met, and then she closed hers.
Her palm lifted—not to his chest, not to his shoulder—but to his forehead. She whispered something under her breath. A soft chant, divine and foreign, laced with warmth that didn't come from the room. It came from her. From her mana. From whatever strange place she drew that healing touch.
Lucius felt it immediately. The pain dulled—not vanished, not cured—but pushed aside, enough for him to exhale again without flinching. For a fleeting second, it felt like peace. It felt like paradise.
As Adrianna stood and turned away to toss the bloodied cloth into the small bin across the room, Lucius barely managed to mumble something.
"Thank you..." He wasn't sure if she heard it. But for the first time since waking up, he wasn't entirely alone.
"So... You lost, huh?" Adrianna asked a non-responsive question, one she didn't really think Lucius would answer, because the answer was already present before her eyes, the state Lucius was in, that was the answer, not the words Lucius was about to use.
"... Yes, and yes." He replied. The first 'yes' was for the mission, which he lost, and the second 'yes'? It was for the loss he suffered because of the mission, his arm and all the injuries he sustained.
"... What happened afterwards?" Lucius questioned after a brief pause as Adrianna grabbed the same part of his arm again.
"From what I know... Ms. Forza Walkins killed that Chimaera using Snowhite, your blade. After you lost consciousness, she carried you all the way from that swamp region you were in, to the entrance of the Sacred Walls, in less than an hour and a half... which was beyond impressive, even for a noble mage." Adrianna spoke calmly, her voice laced with a distant kind of awe. "Near the Lunar Walls, Vice-Captain Ruth of the Aerial Knights was stationed that day. She immediately reacted and brought you here. Luckily, I was on duty."
Lucius listened without interruption. Not because he couldn't speak, but because each piece of information seemed to recalibrate his fractured sense of time and self. It was strange—how something that felt like a few distorted hours in the dreamscape with Zero Dawn had translated to nearly a month here. The disconnect was unsettling. The guilt that followed, heavier.
"It took an entire team of elite doctors and healers a full day just to stabilise you, you know?" she added, not with dramatics, but in pure, sobering truth. "That was around three weeks ago. Since then, you have been completely unconscious. Coma-state. No movement. Your heartbeat was so inconsistent for the first two weeks, the lead physician feared you wouldn't last the night."