( Sorry for the late update today, I was very busy , but better late than never right?)
--------------------------------------------------------
"Please, speak..."
The words tore from Kael's throat raw, nothing like the tempered authority he wore in the council chambers. They were stripped down to their core—one man's desperate plea.
Jade moved closer, his silvery-white hair catching faint threads of light as though spun from starlight itself. His eyes shifted, unraveling the secrets that the governor's wife's body held.
"It isn't poison," Jade began, voice steady. "And it isn't a curse. Her body is being consumed from the inside by a parasite lodged within her mana veins. It weaves through them like roots, drinking her essence thread by thread. It hides in the aura's shadows, so no healer would have seen it unless they looked deeper than they knew how."
Kael's lips parted in silence. His hand tightened over Selene's frail fingers, knuckles pale against her translucent skin.
"What does it mean?"
Jade exhaled slowly. He could still see it—the way Selene's essence threads frayed, veins dimming like a star on the verge of collapse. His voice carried no cruelty, but no softness either. Only truth.
"It means her aura is collapsing. Her body is turning against itself. If nothing is done, she won't last more than a cycle of moons. At best."
The silence that followed struck harder than any blow.
Kael Varros, A-rank Dominant Alpha, governor of Nexus, a man who had crushed rebellions and stared down monstrosities beyond the Rift, staggered as though Jade had pierced him with a blade.
He bowed his head low over Selene's hand, lips pressing to her cold knuckles, his shoulders shaking once—only once. Then, when he rose, the shift in him was absolute. The mask of despair hardened into something lethal.
"You say it can be cured." His voice was no longer a plea. It was command tempered in fire.
"Yes," Jade said simply.
"What is required?"
Jade's gaze turned inward for a moment, recalling the web of decay, the ancient memory of remedies hidden in the knowledge he could never explain aloud. His eyes lifted to meet Kael's.
"Three things. Moonveil blossoms—freshly harvested under starlight. Crystal fern roots—alive, not dried. And marrow bark from a Rift Ash tree." His words were crisp, unyielding. "Not cultivator scraps. Not imitation stocks. They have to be pure. Untainted."
The governor absorbed the names like scripture. His jaw tightened, his mind already turning to vaults and networks that bent beneath his will.
"They will be found." The words carried the certainty of a man whose life had been a series of impossible victories.
Jade shook his head once. "Governor, these aren't common. They won't just be sitting in a market stall waiting to be bought. You'll have to—"
Kael cut him off with a look. It wasn't anger. It was the weight of an Alpha who had ruled too long to ever doubt his reach.
"You will not worry about that, boy." His tone was iron, threaded with a rare warmth beneath it. "You have already done more than any healer in this city dared. You leave the rest to me."
He turned back to Selene, smoothing a strand of hair from her sweat-damp forehead. His voice gentled. "Rest, my heart. I will bring you what you need."
Then, straightening, he fixed his gaze on Jade again.
"You and your family will remain here, in my estate. You will not return to the slums, not until this is finished. My walls are safer than the gutters of Nexus."
Jade nodded once, calm. "Very well."
Kael studied him for a long moment, unease flickering briefly in his heart at the strange stillness of the child. But he forced it aside. What mattered now was Selene.
He strode toward the door, his cloak trailing like a shadow of authority. "I'll walk you to your chambers", he paused and said. Jade nodded and trailed behind him.
At the threshold to Jades's new chamber, he paused and looked back.
"Your family is here".
"I will have the herbs by dawn. Be ready."
And then he was gone, his footsteps echoing down the marble hall like the drumbeat of war.
Jade nodded once and pushed the doors open.
.....
.....
The chamber door closed with a solid thud, Kael's footsteps fading down the corridor until silence pressed in. The faint perfume of burning starwood from the brazier lingered in the air, sharp enough to bite at the senses, warm enough to soften the tension.
Niamh rose from her seat the moment Jade entered. Her eyes, deep with worry, locked onto his face. "Well?" she asked, her voice tight. "What of the governor's wife?"
Jade lowered himself into a chair opposite them, his expression unreadable. The silvery strands of his hair slid like liquid moonlight over his shoulders as he met her gaze. "She's sick. Her aura's being eaten away by something burrowed into her veins. It's slow, but left alone she won't last long."
Niamh's lips pressed thin, grief flickering through her eyes—not for Selene Varros, whom she barely knew, but for the heaviness resting on her boy's small shoulders. "And can she be saved?"
"Yes." His answer was quiet but firm, like steel wrapped in velvet. "The governor will find what I need."
Silence hung for a breath. Then Niamh stepped closer, laying a hand gently on his shoulder. "You need to rest Jade, you haven't gotten a proper one since you got back".
He didn't reply. His eyes softened for a heartbeat, but whatever words he might have said were swallowed by restraint.
It was Lio, shifting awkwardly beside Amara, who broke the lull. His gaze lingered on Jade's face, brows knit together as though something had been scratching at him since the walk to the mansion. He opened his mouth, confusion plain—
—and froze when Jade's eyes flicked toward him. That one sharp look, not angry, just precise, silenced him before a sound could slip free. Lio swallowed hard, understanding flashing in an instant. He shut his mouth and looked away.
It was Amara who finally voiced what had been gnawing at them both. Her arms folded across her chest, tone calm but edged with curiosity. "Your appearance. You never explained."
Niamh's hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. She'd been waiting too, though her worry made her quieter than Amara.
Jade leaned back, the faintest ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. "The dungeon gave me a gift," he said smoothly. His fingers brushed the chain of the necklace hidden beneath his tunic, deactivating it's cloaking ability for a moment , letting the faint glow peek before tucking it back. "Chest reward. An artifact. It allows me to shift what others see."
Amara's sharp eyes narrowed, gauging him. "Convenient."
Lio's confusion returned for a heartbeat, remembering the chest, the rewards they had both saw. He remembered everything single thing in the chest. He had committed them to memory because they were rare and he had never seen most of them before and he could swear he didn't see the necklace amongst the rewards—but this time when his gaze flicked to Jade, the boy's calm silvery eyes pinned him again. Lio shut his mouth fast, a little spark of pride warming in his chest. A secret between them. If Jade wanted it buried, then buried it would be.
He lifted his chin, smug now, shoulders squaring as if he carried a bond none of the others could see. Brother's privilege.
Niamh exhaled, her thumb brushing Jade's shoulder like she might reassure herself he was still there. "You should've told me sooner," she said softly. "Artifacts of that kind draw eyes. And enemies."
"I know." His voice was even, but it carried weight beyond his years. "That's why I didn't."
The words lingered, heavy but resolute.
For a while, no one spoke. The fire crackled. Outside the windows, Nexus night bled violet and gold across the horizon, the city humming faintly with life even at this hour.
Niamh's hand finally slipped away from his shoulder, though her gaze never left him. "You should rest now," she murmured. "You too Lio." She said pinning both of them with a gaze that allowed no refusal.
------------------------------------------------------
The night in Nexus was never truly dark. From the estate's upper balconies, the horizon glimmered with the endless lattice of star-fueled lanterns, floating skiffs, and the glow of mana conduits threading across the city like veins of light. Yet within the governor's private wing, the air was colder, heavier—the kind of quiet that pressed in when hope was brittle.
Kael Varros did not sleep.
He left Selene's chamber only long enough to summon his seneschal and three of his most trusted aides. They gathered in the Hall of Stars, a vaulted chamber with ceilings carved to mimic constellations, each crystal inlaid with mana so that the heavens themselves seemed to breathe above them.
"Moonveil blossoms. Crystal fern roots. Marrow bark," Kael said, voice steady but sharp as a blade. "I want them in my hands before dawn."
The seneschal paled. "Governor… the marrow bark, perhaps. But Moonveil blossoms? They are—"
Kael's eyes snapped to him, the weight of an A-rank pressing down like gravity made flesh. "—rare. Difficult. Expensive. I know." His tone cut through the man's excuse like steel. "But I did not ask for the odds. I asked for the herbs."
The aides bowed deeply, none daring another word. Orders spread like wildfire, messengers sprinting through corridors, signal crystals sparking as requests shot out into Nexus's night. Merchants, couriers, shadow-brokers—all were roused from their beds by the will of Nexus's governor.
Yet whispers traveled faster still.
By the second bell, word had already slithered into ears it should not have reached. A boy from the kitchens, planted years ago, slipped a note into the hands of a servant loyal not to Kael but to the Alchemy Guild. And from there, the message moved like poison in water:
The governor seeks herbs. Rare ones. Urgent. Connected to the slum brat in his house.
It was enough.
By the third bell, Karren herself sat in her alchemy chamber, jaw tight as she read the words scrawled on cheap parchment. Her pride still stung from Draven's cold shoulder, her reputation bruised since the governor's test had lifted a gutter rat into notice. Here, at last, was an opening.
"If Selene Varros is the reason," she muttered, grinding the note between her fingers until ash spilled to the floor, "then the boy is more dangerous than I thought."
She turned to the apprentices cowering nearby. "Send word to the markets. Any seller approached for Moonveil blossoms or fern root is to delay. Prices will rise. Stocks will vanish. Nothing moves without my hand."
The apprentices scattered, and Karren sat back, a bitter smile curling her lips. Let the governor bleed for his wife. Let the boy be blamed when the cure cannot be found.
But in her eagerness, she miscalculated.
Kael Varros did not move like other men.
By the fourth bell, he was no longer waiting in his chambers but in the vaults beneath the estate, striding through rows of sealed relics and locked crates that hummed with mana wards. His seneschal followed at a distance, carrying a ledger, his hands shaking.
"You have reserves of marrow bark, Governor, but… the blossoms—"
Kael pulled a crystal orb from the shelf, his expression grim. "Open a Rift contact. House Varros's fleet has roots beyond Nexus. Someone will have them."
"Governor, at this hour—"
"Then wake the stars if you must!" Kael's voice thundered in the stone halls. "My wife's life is not held hostage by time."
The seneschal scrambled to obey, activating the orb. Faint light shimmered across its surface, pulsing outward like ripples in a pond until the connection stretched far into interstellar space.
Kael did not blink. He had fought in dungeons where time itself twisted. He had stood against horrors that could shatter a man's mind with a glance. Compared to that, what was a guild? What was sabotage?
When the governor of Nexus moved, the city trembled.
And so it began.
...