Alex lifted his head and saw his parents were running toward him. Their footsteps were weak and faltering, as though they had forgotten how to run at all, and they looked as if they might stumble and fall at any moment. Tears streaked down their cheeks, mostly his mother's, while his father's eyes were swollen and red.
"I have to take care of arrangements for tomorrow." Toren said and disappeared from his place as though he had never existed at all.
Alex absentmindedly nodded and lifted himself from the bench, then took a step toward his parents. Then another. Then another step, and before long his legs were moving faster and faster until he was running.
His parents immediately engulfed him in a hug as he appeared before them, both of them bending their knees to reach him from each side. He felt warmth and comfort for the first time since entering the gate. Their arms wrapped tightly around him, and he could feel their hands trembling as they ran over him, as though checking that every part of him was still there.
His father was the first to pull back, and Alex was immediately drawn into his mother's embrace. His head came to rest on her shoulder, and the tears that already streaked her cheeks began flowing anew. She broke down completely, one hand moving rapidly over his back and the other pressing his head firmly against her shoulder.
"W-We tho...uught we lo...ost yo...uu." His mother's voice came in ragged, choked breaths, and she held him tighter with every broken syllable.
How did they know? Alex thought, and felt his chest tighten at the sound of her shattered voice.
"Your soul lamp stopped burning," his mother murmured, her voice low and frail, nothing like her usual self. "I was so afraid that you had left us."
Alex's breath caught in his throat. He found his hands moving of their own accord, tracing slow, steady circles across her back, the same way she had always done for him. She looked nothing like the mother he knew. She was a strong mother who always carried herself with the utmost nobility and grace, and seeing her reduced to this state, his heart pained.
"I am alive, Mother," Alex answered, his voice barely above a whisper, nothing like the ease with which he spoke on any ordinary day.
His mother suddenly released the hug and gripped both of his shoulders, bringing her face level with his. Her azure eyes were full of tears, red veins spreading through the whites, and her azure hair hung tangled and loose around her. "Promise me," she urged, her voice absolute and yet trembling all the same, "promise me you will never leave us."
"I promise," Alex nodded, clenching his fists at his sides. "I will not leave my family." His voice grew louder with each word, as though speaking it firmly enough might make it bind.
His mother simply nodded, a small smile working its way onto her face as she reached up to pat his head. But she stopped midway. Her eyes swept over him from head to toe and the colour drained from her face, as pale and sudden as if the blood had been pulled clean from her face.
"What happened to you?" Her gaze moved rapidly over his tattered uniform and the one bare foot without a shoe. The air around her grew suffocating. Her voice dropped to something dangerously quiet. "Who did this to you?"
Alex found himself freezing in place as a cold mist began radiating off his mother, the already cold night turned almost glacial around them as though the air itself was preparing to crystallise.
Shane placed a hand gently on Sera's arm, and only then did the cold begin to recede. But his mother's face did not soften even slightly. The tearstained expression fell away, and in its place returned the sharp, composed countenance of the grand duchess, waiting to announce a decree.
"U-umm..." Alex searched for the right words, turning over in his mind how best to explain what had happened without igniting her again. He began carefully. "I am in this state because I entered a yellow gate alone. And I think... I died."
His mother's face went still for a single breath. He caught the faint glimmer of red at the corner of her lips where she had bitten through the skin.
"Continue," she said.
Alex slowly explained everything. He told them how he had entered the gate and why, explaining that he had thought throwing himself into danger might somehow solve the problem he faced. He did not mention the conversation with Old Wan, sensing that it would only complicate matters, so he kept it quietly to himself. He also said nothing about Eldric's bullying, not wanting to give his parents reason to pull him from the academy, and not wanting them to carry the weight of feeling they had failed as parents. Then Alex described what welcomed him inside the gate. He told about the horde of goblins that had swarmed him, the goblin warrior and the enormous club it carried, a weapon larger than Alex himself.
His parents' expressions grew heavy with worry, but neither of them stopped him.
He continued without leaving out a single detail. He described how the goblins chased him. How he had nearly stepped his foot into a dark red ocean and lost his shoe due to that. He told them about his foot's condition due to it.
He did not tell them about the thoughts he had held in those moments, the part where he had said goodbye to them in his heart, how sorry he had felt for having to leave them. That thing he kept to himself. He described how he had charged at the incoming goblins, and how he had died. He told them that his arms were torn from their sockets and his body driven into the ground where he breathed his last breaths. His mother's fist clenched at her side. His father went still like a statue listening to the account of Alex's death, and both of his parents looked as though they might break down and wrap him in their arms at any moment, though they held themselves back. He held himself back too, blinking hard against the sting behind his eyes, because even just recounting it made the memory surge forward with horrible feeling, the feeling of that final breath was still vivid deep inside him.
Then he told them about drifting through the dark and waking in a white, cave-like place with no memories, where he encountered twins who turned him away from a vast golden frame. He described the battlefield stretched out beyond it, the golden threads woven through the air, and finally his meeting with the goddess who had returned him to the living world. He finished by explaining that when he opened his eyes the goblins were gone and the gate had been cleared. He retrieved the gloves that he had received as a reward from his dimensional space to show them, and explained the class he had unlocked, unclassed, before adding quickly that he had also gained a secondary class, Death Swordsman, at which a faint smile crossed both his parents' faces for the first time since he had begun speaking. He ended with telling them about his new skill, Minor Death Sword Aura and that he was now level twenty-five.
His parents nodded, and small smiles appeared briefly at the corners of their mouths before fading back into composed, straight lines.
"We are happy for you," his father said quietly. "But never take such a gamble again."
Then Alex's mother reached out and cupped his cheeks in both of her hands, tender and full of love. "Never put yourself in danger like that," she echoed, her voice low, the blood still faint at the corner of her lips where she had been biting down throughout the entire time he was telling the reasons for his state. "We are happy that you finally levelled up. However, we do not care whether you level up or remain at level one for the rest of your life."
She continued, her voice hovering on the edge of breaking once more. "We love you and we care for you because of who you are, not for any achievement you earn." Warmth radiated from her palms despite how cold her palms were. "Not for what you accomplish or how far you level up."
Alex nodded, and felt tears prick at his eyes. He pressed the inside of his cheek. He had been so wrong about all of it. His parents had never cared about achievements or high levels. They had only ever wanted him safe and happy.
"Please stay alive for us, for as long as we are alive," his mother whispered, her voice unravelling at the edges. "Do not risk your life like this again. We are here. We will lay down our own lives so that you can have everything you want in yours. We would die for you. Never leave us behind."
Alex nodded weakly, and the tears came before he could stop them, trailing silently down his cheeks. He had been so wrong. Also, he had been so afraid. He was alone inside that gate with no one to stand beside him, while out here in the world he had his parents, his family, people who would lay down everything for him. He had died and come back, and it had been nothing close to a peaceful experience. He could still feel it vividly, the goblin warrior's hands wrenching his arms apart at the sockets. It was an unpleasant and traumatic experience.
His mother pulled him into another embrace. This time, it was Alex who broke down. He told her everything he had held back, everything he felt inside the gate: how terrified he had been, how desperately he had missed them, how small and sorry and reckless he had felt. He cried and cried, pouring every fear he felt inside the gate to his parents who had never once cared about his level, and never once needed him to be anything more than alive.
***
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