The shack was a rotting lung, exhaling the stench of stagnant sweat and the copper-sick tang of mana that hadn't been grounded. It stuck to the back of my throat like wet wool. On the pallet, Elisabeth looked less like a princess and more like a landed fish—pale, slippery with fever, her blonde hair matted into the straw.
"Grab her shoulders, Xavier. If she thrash-kicks while the essence is mid-vein, she'll snap her own spine."
My fingers were slick. The manticore core—a jagged, violet-bruised lump of crystallized spite—was thrumming against my palm. I'd lashed a hollowed bird-bone to a shard of alchemist's glass, a needle born of desperation. I jammed it into the core, and the essence that flooded the tube wasn't a liquid. It was a slurping, violet sludge that looked like it wanted to eat the glass before I could find a vein.
I hit the vein in her arm on the first try. I didn't feel like a healer; I felt like a man stoking a furnace. I shoved the plunger down.
The reaction wasn't a "peaceful awakening." It was a violent, bone-deep rebellion.
Elisabeth's eyes didn't just open; they rolled back until only the bloodshot whites showed, her pupils pin-pricking as the manticore's toxin-mana flooded her nervous system. She arched so hard I heard the wooden frame groan under her heels. Purple lines—hot, glowing, and angry—raced up her throat like a map of a dying city.
And then, she went flat. The light in the veins didn't fade; it just stopped moving.
Xavier's hand went to her throat. His face went white, the blood draining out of him faster than the heat from her body.
"Raymond. Raymond, she's cold. Her heart—it's not—"
I shoved him so hard he hit the mud-caked wall. "Get out of the way!"
I locked my elbows and hammered my palms into her chest. Crack. A rib gave way. Good. If you aren't breaking ribs, you aren't doing it right. I breathed into her, the air tasting of bile and copper. One. Two. Three. I was sweating now, the salt stinging my eyes. Xavier was on his knees, a broken mess of royal breeding and useless grief.
"Raymond, stop it," he choked out, his voice a wet rasp. "She's gone. You killed her with that... that thing. Let her be."
"Shut your mouth!" I roared, the mana in my own veins beginning to sizzle.
I wasn't a doctor, but I remembered the way Marduk used to make severed legs twitch in the lab. It wasn't about "science." It was about force. I needed a spark. Not a campfire, but the kind of jagged, screaming bolt that splits an oak tree.
I slammed my palms together over her heart. I didn't look for a menu. I looked for the friction. I imagined the air tearing apart, the smell of ozone before a storm, the sheer, unbridled arrogance of the sky.
> [Notation Analysis] Breach Detected.
> Vibration Frequency Identified: 440hz [Lethal Discharge].
> Skill Grafting: [Lightning Magic - Novice] (Unstable).
>
My hands didn't "glow." They erupted. Arcs of blue-white fire bit into my own palms, smelling of burnt hair.
"First jolt!"
Her body slammed against the straw. The violet veins on her neck pulsed once, then died.
"Again!"
Xavier was sobbing now, his head between his knees. He'd given up. I hadn't. I couldn't. If she died, this whole island was just a very slow cemetery.
"Third one!"
The shock threw me backward, my nerves screaming as the feedback looped through my arms. Elisabeth didn't just breathe—she vomited. A thick, oily black bile sprayed across the pallet, and her lungs took in a breath so deep it sounded like a sail tearing in a gale. Her eyes snapped to the ceiling, wide and glassy.
"Xavier...?" Her voice was the sound of dry leaves being crushed. "It burns. My chest... everything is... sharp."
Xavier didn't say a word. He just crawled over and buried his face in her shoulder, shaking with the kind of relief that looks exactly like a heart attack. He tried to explain it to her—the shipwreck, the way I'd broken his ribs to teach him to breathe, the mother they'd left in the dirt.
"It's him," she whispered, her eyes finally tracking to me. She didn't look grateful. She looked like she'd seen a ghost and realized the ghost was holding a knife.
"He's why we're breathing, Lisbeth," Xavier croaked. "Without him... We would already be dead."
"And Mother?"
The silence that followed was the only honest thing in the room. Xavier didn't have to say it. The way he looked at the floor was a eulogy in itself. Elisabeth didn't scream. She just let out a long, shuddering breath and began to weep, a silent, hollow sound that made the room feel even smaller.
Outside, the rain was a fine, salty mist. Mira, the blue-furred manticore cub, was hunched by the door. Every time Xavier's sobs grew louder inside, her fur stood on end, electric sparks jumping between her ears. She was terrified. A bonded beast knows that a broken master is a dead master.
I knelt. She hissed, baring teeth that were already turning the color of obsidian. I didn't flinch. I put my hand on her head and pressed down, not with violence, but with the weight of a mountain.
"He's not dying, cat. He's just shedding a skin that didn't fit him."
Mira leaned into the touch, her purr sounding like a grindstone. I glanced at Rex. My manticore was watching me with those red, judgmental eyes. He knew I was pushing the limits of the [Notation] system.
"Rex. Guard them. If a lizard so much as twitches toward this shack, tear its throat out."
The beast chuffed and sat. I turned toward the forest, my mind racing. The [Notation Analysis] was flickering in my peripheral vision, but I couldn't open the sub-menus. It was like having a map but being too blind to read the legend. I needed to get to the island's central stele.
I was halfway there when Rex cut me off, his shadow long in the grey light. He didn't growl. He just jerked his head back toward the cabin.
"Already?" I muttered.
When I got back, Xavier was hauling Elisabeth up. She was a wreck, her legs shaking like a newborn colt's, but he had her over his shoulder. He wanted to take her to the mound.
We trudged through the muck to the driftwood cross. It was a pathetic thing, half-rotted by the sea spray. The final resting place of the royal concubine of the sovereign of Arcachon. Xavier set Elisabeth down in the mud. She didn't care about the filth. She just sank her fingers into the earth, her head bowed.
I stood behind them, a silhouette against the grey sky.
"Your mother told me to tell you something," I said, my voice flat. "She said she wasn't going anywhere. That as long as you can remember her, she's still there. In your heart."
Elisabeth looked up, her eyes hard as flint. "Decency. Do you even know the word? Or is every moment a chance to lecture us?"
"Decency is a luxury for people who have walls and guards," I snapped. "Your mother is in the dirt. Your legs are half-ruined. Manticore essence is butcher's work, Elisabeth. It's held your nerves together, but every step you take is going to feel like walking on hot needles. You can cry about decency, or you can learn to walk through the fire."
I kicked a bag of raw, stringy meat at Xavier's feet.
"She needs red meat. Fresh. We're going to start hunting the mutated stuff—high-grade mana saturation. If she eats grain and broth, she'll be a cripple by winter. Xavier, you're her shadow now. You do the flexion exercises. If she screams, keep going. If she begs you to stop, you push harder. You're not her brother right now. You're her medic."
Xavier nodded, his jaw set so tight I thought his teeth might crack. The prince was gone. Good riddance.
By nightfall, I'd moved to the clearing. I had my halberd—the one I'd forged back after Marduk's death. I wasn't just building a kennel for the manticores; I was carving runes into the foundation stones. Stone and wood. Containment and Weight.
Later, the fire was a dying orange ember. Xavier came out, smelling of salt and blood. I threw a roll of parchment at him. He caught it with a grunt and unfurled it.
"What the hell is a 'Clipper'?"
"Our way off this rock," I said. "A flying ship. Not a merchant cog with a balloon tied to it. An atmospheric raider."
Xavier let out a harsh, dry laugh. "A flying ship? Ray, the Empires spend millions on those. They have teams of mages, crystals the size of your head, and shipyards. We have... what? A shack and two cats?"
Mira and Rex looked at him sharply, irritated by this statement.
I have nothing against you! But still, when addressing the two animals...
"Anyways! we have a mana source your 'Empires' would go to war for," I said, pointing to the forge. "And we have the labor of the tribes in the valley, once I've broken them. We aren't leaving here as refugees, Xavier. We aren't going to crawl into some port and beg for scraps. We're going to load that ship with ironwood, mutated cores, and every rare herb on this island. When we land, we won't be beggars. We'll be the men people are afraid to trade with."
Xavier looked at the sketches—the hull lines, the mana-ducts. "The port authorities... the naval blockades... And my identity"
"Are you planning on wearing a crown and shouting to everybody who you are ?"
"No."
"Then shut up about it. One problem at a time. If you're looking at the finish line while you're still in the mud, you're already a corpse."
I kicked dirt over the fire, plunging us into shadow.
"Tomorrow, the real work begins. Your body is healed. Now we break your mind. You wanted the 'Mud'? You've got it. Water and Earth. Double affinity."
I leaned in, my eyes catching the last spark of the embers.
"If you can't balance the weight of the stone with the flow of the river, your mana will backflow. You'll turn into a statue of salt or a pile of sludge. But I'll be there. Not to hold your hand, but to make sure you don't stop until you've got it right."
Xavier clenched his fists. "I'll be ready."
"We'll see," I whispered. "We'll see if you have the backbone to carry the weight of my world."