Chương 29: Chapter 28 - Conviction

"Please, I cannot take it anymore." The gasp was a raw, desperate plea that slipped under the heavy oak door and caught the attention of the few servants in the hall.

"It hurts. I cannot, I am tired, young master." Inside the dimly lit room, Lucid stood for a moment, looking down at the work of art he made. The maid seemed fragile and exhausted. The air was thick with the scent of strong gas like smell and dust, and the only sound was her labored breathing. He tore his gaze away from the mess they have created and turned to his partner in crime, the maid. She was on the floor beside a low table, her dress pooled around her, utterly exhausted.

Her face was damp with sweat, and her hands were stained with dark powder and ground herbs. She had been mixing ingredients for hours under his sharp, quiet orders. He had never asked her name, though he had seen her through four cycles, or possibly more now. She was just a tool, a pair of helpful hands he had pulled from the crowd.

"Hey." She squeaked. A jolt of shock went straight up her back as if she had been sentenced to death. Her head snapped up, eyes wide with fright.

"What is your name?" he asked, his tone flat and devoid of warmth.

"Have you forgotten, young master?" she muttered shyly, her gaze dropping to the mortar and pestle in her stained hands.

"Your name," he said, more firmly, like a command.

"Jane. Jane is my name. Jane Edward."

"Jane, huh?" Lucid said, looking down at her disheveled form.

"It is a fitting name. I like it." Jane had been present in his cycles, but he had paid her no mind. She really did blend in with the rest of the staff, a quiet, mousy-haired girl who was good at being invisible. Earlier, on his urgent way to this old storage shed he used as a secret workshop, he had grabbed her arm from the laundry line, pulling along anyone who looked recognizable and compliant.

Now, in the flickering candlelight, she gestured weakly to the cluttered table with its strange glass apparatus and bubbling vials.

"May I ask what these are for, young master?" Lucid followed her gaze.

"These? To fight against Materna."

"What?" she replied, her voice filled with pure confusion.

"It is a joke," he said quickly. He was trying to put on an act, to think of an excuse.

"It is just, ahh." He stammered, uncharacteristically lost for words he had a habit of saying things too casually.

"A medicine, for..." She cut him off, her gentle voice soft but clear.

"Whatever it is that you have made, it is clearly important to you. I hardly believe you, young master, act on a whim." She offered a small, tired smile, looking up at his face from her position on the floor. It was an appreciative look, but also one of deep weariness.

"Yeah, yeah. Get up," he said, not unkindly. He reached a hand down toward her. She placed her dusty, stained fingers in his, and he pulled her up with surprising ease. He held her steady for a moment, his hands on her shoulders, inspecting her. Her apron was a mess, her hair had come loose from its cap, and she was trembling slightly from fatigue. He could not have anyone seeing her leave this room looking so thoroughly worked over and suspect something improper.

"You are dismissed," he stated, letting her go.

"I will take these things and retire for the day."

"Oh, okay then," she replied, nervously tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She hesitated, swaying on her feet.

"I thought..."

"Thought what?" he asked, his voice now carrying a little tension.

"Now get out of here before I change my mind." She managed a faint whimper, nodded, bowed formally, and exited, closing the door softly behind her. Lucid was drenched in a cold sweat of his own. This body, for all its natural stamina, was thrumming with nervous energy and the strain of concentrated effort. He gathered the precious results of their work, wrapping several glass vials filled with a brilliant, shimmering blue liquid in a thick bedsheet.

As he left the room and stepped into the brightly lit corridor, he immediately felt the weight of eyes upon him. Every servant polishing silver, every butler carrying a tray, every passing footman paused to watch him. Their whispers began as he passed, a hissing current of speculation. They saw their young master leaving a secluded room, clutching a suspicious bundle, looking flushed and intense, right after a disheveled maid had scurried out. The story wrote itself in their minds. He did not care.

Their judgment was a meaningless noise. His first real stop was Lyle. He had to help him first. Lucid ran through the quiet halls towards his older brother's workshop in the west wing. He threw the door open without knocking. Lyle was slumped over his vast drafting table, asleep. It was well past midnight. Seeing his older brother, who was always so passionately awake and brilliant, asleep at his work was a wrong and jarring sight.

'Do not let my emotions get over me. I need to focus. This is not my brother, nor my family,' Lucid thought, a mantra to steady himself. He carefully stepped toward Lyle. His memory ached with guilt. In a past cycle, he had essentially condemned Lyle to death, stealing all his freedom and time, forcing him to work on a cure that ultimately failed. He had betrayed this person's trust for a cause that ended in ash. He was going to make it up now.

He uncapped a syringe and carefully injected the glowing blue antidote into Lyle's arm. Lyle, trapped in an enchanted sleep, was indifferent to the small pinch. He barely reacted, just a faint twitch of his fingers. Lucid sighed in relief and looked around the room. It was a cavern of genius. Blueprints and draft sheets were everywhere, scribbled with notes, equations, and wild ideas. Large schematics were plastered across the walls.

One drawing in particular caught his eye: a detailed, meticulously measured sketch of a long, metallic rectangle on wheels. It was labeled with precise numbers and technical terms. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

'A train,' Lucid realized with a start.

'In a world like this?' He remembered the lore of this land. The only way of long-distance travel was through the Great Pathways, ancient roads of solidified, glowing light powered by a mysterious energy called Fate Essence. These pathways connected the continents. The drawing before him showed a vision of a massive railway built upon that same energy, a revolutionary system to travel not just across land, but more efficiently and powerfully.

'Could that be what he wanted to invent? To change the entire transit system of the world?' He looked at Lyle's sleeping face with newfound awe. A true, revolutionary genius. And someone like this was doomed to die in his sleep from a magical plague. The injustice of it twisted in Lucid's gut, a fresh and burning coil of anger. The night was still young. Moving with the silence of a shadow, Lucid went next to the rooms of Karmen's mother and young niece.

He administered the cure to each of them as they slept, his movements precise and swift in the dark. Finally, he made his way to his father's study. The heart of the house. The governor. Though Karmen was the heir, the real power and dignity rested with his father, a man who always seemed carved from oak and granite. Lucid slipped inside, carefully closing the door behind him. He expected to find the man passed out at his grand desk or collapsed in his bed. He was not prepared for what he saw.

Lord Valrious was sprawled on the fine rug before the cold fireplace, limbs at unnatural angles, as if he had been struck down mid-stride.

"Father!" Lucid cried out, the name ripped from his throat by a genuine, seizing bolt of grief. He rushed to his side, dropping to his knees. He grabbed his father's wrist, pressed trembling fingers to his neck, desperately searching for a sign of life. There was a pulse. Faint and thready, but it was there. Relief was a brief, cold splash. Lucid hurriedly pulled the last vial and syringe from his pouch. But as he brought the needle toward his father's arm, a hand shot up, blocking him.

The grip, though weak, was determined. His father's eyes were open. They were the same clear, sharp blue as Karmen's, but clouded with pain and a deep, tired knowing. He looked at Lucid, or at Karmen, or at the strange amalgamation before him.

"What are you doing?" his father rasped.

"Take this," Lucid urged, his voice tight.

"It will fight the corrosive Fate Essence. It will slow down the Withering." His father's gaze held his. In those eyes, Lucid saw a concern so familiar it was a physical blow. It reminded him of a loss from his own buried past, a door he kept firmly locked. He was shaken, but he could not afford to be distracted. He had to finish this.

"Karmen," his father whispered, each word a struggle.

"Do you remember the vow you made when you were five?"

"What was it, world peace?" Lucid tried to laugh, but it came out as a strained cough. He was clinging to the act.

"I looked at you. You were so kind, so earnest in your little act," his father continued, a ghost of a smile on his pale lips.

"I trained you. You were the perfect son. Lyle was a genius, too. I have never been more proud."

"Just breathe," Lucid said, trying to steer the moment back to action.

"I am here now. It is alright."

"That Enlightened healer I summoned did her best," his father said, his voice growing fainter, "but your grandfather could not be saved. I do not fear. I am the next as well."

"But do not tell your mother. Or Lyle. Or anyone."

"Father," Lucid insisted, clinging to logic like a raft.

"This person, this healer. Why did you call her? What were the conditions for grandfather to need this much aid?"

"Your grandfather," his father said, the words slow and thick, "was a truly spectacular leader. He was a descendant of a young, passionate man who split away from the grasp of Materna to create a new place where everyone was welcome."

"He helped. He aided. Even as governor, he would shovel the snow from the market path himself at dawn. He really was..." A violent cough wracked his body, and fresh blood spotted his lips and chin. Lucid could not listen anymore. He could not absorb this tragic family history. It was a story for another time, a luxury for a linear life.

"Listen to me, Father. This woman you hired is from the Materna Empire. She wants nothing more than to ruin our land, our family, our town. She caused this sickness. She is the poison."

"I beg you, rethink this. Take the medicine and let us call the guards. We can still stop her!"

"I am aware," his father breathed, his eyes holding a profound, sorrowful certainty.

"I am aware."

"Then why?" Lucid yelled, the question bursting from him, loud and desperate, shattering the quiet of the study.

"It is complicated, Karmen." His father lifted a trembling, bloodied hand and cupped Lucid's cheek. A single tear traced a clean path through the dust on the older man's skin. Lucid felt it, but the sob that hitched in his own chest, the tears that welled in his own eyes, were not his to command. His body was moving on its own. Karmen was rising to the surface, breaking through.

"You will understand, Karmen," his father promised, his voice fading like a sigh.

"All I ask of you is to hold your head high amidst the despair."

"Fate is not absolute. Mother Fate is merciful..."

"You doomed Mother! And Brother! Everyone!" Lucid, or perhaps it was Karmen now, shouted, the lines between them blurring into pain.

"I do not understand these cryptic messages!"

"Please, Father, I am begging you, please!" The voice that cried out was purely Karmen's, young, broken, and utterly lost. As Karmen's father slowly surrendered to the grasp of death, his existence severing from the world, he managed one last, slight smile.

"I hear that you were seeing a maid of ours Jane Edward was it?," he whispered, the words barely audible.

"You are close. However, it is unbefitting of a master to engage in such acts with a maid."

"What?" Karmen sobbed, the words not registering through the haze of overwhelming grief.

"Very well," his father murmured, his gaze drifting to something beyond the ceiling.

"Take the house funds. Go to another place. In Vex, perhaps. Settle. Marry her if you wish, if that is your wish... I shall not object...." His hand fell from Lucid's face, dropping limply to the rug. Silence. The only sound was the faint, settling crackle of a dying ember in the hearth. He had failed. Lucid had failed again. He knelt there for a long time, the empty syringe in one hand, his father's cooling hand in the other.

The grief was a double-edged sword: Karmen's, a raw, all-consuming fire, and his own, a colder, heavier stone of repeated, futile loss. The cryptic words echoed.

'Fate is not absolute.' Was it a message meant for karmen? Did his father somehow sense the truth? And the final, mundane concern about a maid's honor and a suggestion of flight... it was so heartbreakingly ordinary, so human. Lucid carefully closed his father's eyes. He stood up, his muscles stiff and cold. The cycle was broken yet lucid was painfully close to activating the rifts penalty. He had saved the brother, the niece.

But the pillar, the governor, the man who might have understood something crucial, was gone. The plot would advance. Materna's agent still had her victory. He walked to the window and looked out at the dark, sleeping estate. The first faint hint of grey was touching the eastern sky. Dawn was coming. He had work to do. Grief was a room he could not live in. He lived in a maze of time, and he had just hit another dead end.

He had failures to analyze, a father's last confusing words to untangle, and an enemy who was still out there, winning. He was Lucid. And he was Karmen. And he had just lost, again. But as the new light began to wash the stars away, he knew the night, and his fight, were far from over. He had to find a way to win.