Consciousness didn't return all at once. It arrived as a slow, dull ache.
It wasn't a clean break—no sudden gasp of air followed by clarity. It was a dragging sensation, like being pulled through sand, through old memories, through pain that didn't know where to settle.
Liora inhaled sharply. Cool air. Herbs. Burnt resin. And beneath it all, the coppery, ozone tang of healing magic.
Her eyes fluttered open.
The ceiling above was carved cedar—foreign, warm in colour, but heavy with age. Shadows caught in the grooves like dust. A thin ribbon of light traced the edge of the room, steady and sharp.
Alive. The realisation surprised her more than the pain.
Her arm throbbed in a low, steady rhythm. Her chest felt banded with iron. And her mana... her mana was screaming. She swallowed, tasting parchment-dryness.
…Jake…?
Her head turned slowly. She was always the careful patient, obedient to the body's limits even when she despised them.
And there he was.
Jake Faust, asleep in a low chair beside her bed.
Hair messy. Breath uneven. Shoulders pulled forward, as if someone had shown him how to collapse and he'd followed the instructions perfectly. Even unconscious, he looked drained, exhaustion carved right down to the bone.
Her heart knocked. Once. Twice. Hard.
He shouldn't be here.
Not beside someone like her. Not beside a Death Adept with unstable mana and a track record of wreckage.
Liora exhaled shakily, letting her gaze drift back to the cedar ceiling. Her thoughts spiralled—a cracked, repeating loop. The tunnels. The sentinel. Jake's panic. Her fire. The backlash is tearing through her arm. The spell she used—the one she should not have been able to cast at her level.
She remembered Jake shouting her name. Then, darkness.
I almost died.
She had known it the moment she cast the escape. A Mors adept knew their own mortality intimately; it was the currency they traded in. But Jake... he had no such armour.
She closed her eyes.
If he stays with me, he will die.
The thought arrived quietly, like a whisper from a grave. Not prophecy. Not fear. Just knowledge. Cold, geometric certainty that settled in her sternum like a stone.
Jake was kind. Not soft—he wasn't soft at all—but kind in the ways that mattered. Kind in the ways that made someone like her dangerous to be around.
Her fingers curled into the sheets. She thought of the depths—the resonance she had felt, the faint pull that wasn't her own mana. A mistake made by fate, or something older than fate. She didn't understand it yet, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
But she understood one thing clearly: He is getting dragged into my path. And my path only leads one way.
A breath trembled out of her. She opened her eyes again, forcing herself to sit up just an inch. Her arm protested, pain rippling like liquid fire under her skin, but she hissed it into silence.
The room was still. The healer—Master Khalil—was gone, though his presence lingered in the faint hum of the wards he'd left. Liora rubbed her face gently with her good hand. The world was too loud in her head.
She needed a direction. She needed a plan. A place where she could stabilise, where Jake could be kept safe—at least for a little while—and where questions could finally be answered.
Her thoughts drifted to the old place. To the arid heat. To the House of Mors.
Her stomach tightened.
That place held memories. Judgment. Expectations she'd fled for good reason. It held a truth she wasn't ready to confront.
But it was the only place left. The only place that could explain why her magic was spiralling, why her resonance cracked, why she could feel the edges of her soul fraying. The only place that could tell her what Jake had become.
The idea sparked in her mind, reluctant and heavy, like lifting the lid of a sealed tomb.
Egypt. The House of Death.
Even thinking the name made her chest constrict. Something—old fear, ancient pain—shifted behind her ribs. She pushed it down before it could take root. There wasn't room for fear now.
Her eyes drifted back to Jake.
He'd shifted slightly in his sleep, brow furrowed, a soft grimace tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked like he was dreaming of something that clenched every muscle in his body.
She studied him. He wasn't just some boy she had rescued out of guilt or obligation anymore. That had been true at first—the Order hunting him, her interference dragging him into her fire. But something in the tunnels had changed. Something subtle, almost imperceptible, like a seed cracking open in the dark.
She saw him differently now. Not romantically. Not maternally.
It was more like... like a younger brother she didn't know she'd been handed. One who didn't know he was walking blindly into the dark. One who had no idea how much danger he was in just by breathing the same air as her.
Her chest ached. She reached out, hesitated, then touched his hair—barely a brush of her fingers.
He leaned into the touch unconsciously.
Her breath hitched. Jake… you shouldn't trust me this much.
She withdrew her hand as if she'd touched a hot coal.
Her thoughts snapped into alignment. Sharper. Clearer.
Get him somewhere safe. Get answers. Get control.
Go to Egypt. To Mors.
She felt the reluctance rise again, bitter as bile. She swallowed it down. It was the only way forward.
Liora straightened slowly, ignoring the screaming protest of her arm. Jake mumbled something in his sleep, his brow creasing deeper. Her voice came out softer than she intended, a whisper meant for ghosts.
"Don't worry, Jake… I won't let them take you. Not ever."
Not the Order. Not the Sentinels. Not even her own Arcana.
But as soon as the promise left her lips, a colder thought followed in its wake:
And I hope… I hope I don't become the thing that kills you.
The lantern beside her flickered, reacting to her sudden spike of mana. She forced herself to breathe.
Egypt. The House of Death. Her past.
It was the beginning of everything she'd been running from.