The sickness came quietly.
It always did.
At first, it was a cough his mother dismissed as fatigue. Then fever. Then nights where she struggled to breathe, her mana flickering like a candle at the end of its wick.
Drake knew immediately.
Not because he was a god—but because he had watched this before.
He stayed by her side, helping where he could, holding her hand when pain wracked her body. Villagers came to help, offering herbs, prayers, apologies.
Drake felt the solution pressing against his seal.
One release.
One adjustment.
He could rewrite her body. Remove the sickness as if it had never existed. No one would know. No one would suspect.
He said nothing.
His mother noticed.
"You're quiet," she whispered one night.
"I'm thinking," Drake replied.
She smiled weakly. "You always do that."
Her hand tightened around his. "Whatever you're thinking… don't forget to live, alright?"
She died before dawn.
There was no divine sign. No thunder. No omen.
Just silence.
Drake buried her beneath the old tree on the hill. His father stood beside him, unmoving, hands clenched so tightly his knuckles bled.
After that, his father worked harder than ever.
As if motion could outrun grief.
Drake helped him finish the tool left half-made on the bench. They worked in silence, side by side, until his father finally spoke.
"You could leave," he said quietly. "The academy… you're ready."
Drake looked at him. "What about you?"
His father shook his head. "I've lived my life. You haven't."
He died a month later.
Not from sickness.
From exhaustion.
Drake buried him beside his mother.
That night, thunder rolled across a clear sky.
Drake stood alone at the edge of the village at dawn, pack on his back, the world stretching endlessly before him.
"I will remember," he said softly.
And then he walked away.