Chapter 17:

  "The Countdown"

  Arc 2: Chapter 7

  POV: "???"

  More days passed, filled with restoration missions. Empty was a silent river of healing, his touch an antidote for death. Wherever his metal fingers touched the cracked earth, stubborn sprouts pushed through the gray crust. The Infernal Zone receded, centimeter by centimeter, before him. He worked with a constancy that was not discipline, but a deep compulsion, as if the earth itself whispered a prayer only he could answer.

  Until, during a confrontation with a swift and serpentine curse, the impossible happened.

  Empty stumbled..

  His movement—always a supernatural economy of force, a predictable ballet of darkness—broke. It was slow. Awkward. An almost human tremor. The curse, a creature of claws and fury, seized the opening. Its strike grazed Empty's shoulder with a screech of shredded metal, tearing away a chunk of armor.

  Luna, who had fought beside him for so long in perfect synchronicity, saw.

  It was a tiny error. A single instant of failure.

  But for her, who had studied his movements like a language, it was like witnessing the axis of the world tremble.

  Instinct propelled her forward, a blind impulse to throw herself between him and the next attack. But the sudden wave of panic—Empty had made a mistake—froze her own reflexes. She stumbled, losing her balance.

  Before her body could hit the ground, the air split beside her.

  Luka materialized like a bolt of lightning, all brute force and precision. His arm wrapped around her waist, yanking her from the air, while his axe, "Twilight Fury," intercepted the curse's strike with a purple flash and a dry crack of dissipated energy.

  "Luna! Careful!" his shout was a roar of alarm and relief, pulling her into the safety of his shadow.

  Raphadun, face drained of color, ran to Empty, who was already rising with disturbing slowness.

  "Empty! Are you okay?" his voice came out strangled. "Damn… even you make mistakes sometimes, huh?"

  Empty nodded, a heavy movement. Even through the mask, his eyes narrowed in an attempt at a reassuring smile. He began to walk toward Luna, his step dragging, to check if she was unharmed.

  It was then.

  A dark and thick jet—not the vivid red of human blood, but a deep, almost purple blackness that seemed to suck in the light around it—exploded from beneath the slit of his mask. It dripped down the metal chin, thick as oil, staining the breastplate with a liquid, unnatural wound.

  His eyes, still trying to convey calm, simply went out. Turned inward, empty.

  And he collapsed.

  Not like a warrior falling, but like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut. A dead, silent weight against the now-fertile soil he had helped create.

  The air in the House of Mages' infirmary smelled of dried herbs and ozone. Empty lay on a stretcher, his armor partially removed, exposing the skeletal torso and pulsing runes that now seemed weaker, intermittent. Outside, Luna and Raphadun waited. The silence between them was physical, an ice block composed of unspoken fear and guilt.

  When the mage-healer Yuran emerged, closing the door with funeral care, his face betrayed no hope.

  "What does he have?" Luna's question came out direct, a steel thread about to snap. "Will he be okay?"

  The mage wiped his hands on a cloth, avoiding her gaze.

  "He has… something holding him together. Anchored to what remains of his vital core." He paused, searching for an analogy between the worlds he knew. "It's not an organ. It's an energy. A primordial spark."

  "And it's fading?" Raphadun cut in, his voice rough.

  "Every time he employs his power, especially in large-scale restoration acts… he doesn't channel. He transfuses. He drains that central energy out of himself, injecting it into the world." The mage looked toward the door, as if he could see the inert body through it. "It's an act of… continuous donation. A transfusion of his own vital essence to heal the land."

  Raphadun choked, the air leaving his lungs like a punch.

  "He… he knew this? All along?"

  The mage finally met their eyes. There was a certain tragic reverence in his gaze.

  "From the pattern of wear, from the almost pathological adaptations of the body to conserve energy… yes, sir. He has known for a very, very long time. He knows the price of every leaf that sprouts."

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  Luna shrank.

  "How much time does he have?" Her own words sounded distant, as if someone else had spoken them.

  The mage looked down at his hands that could not heal.

  "At the current rate of wear… we calculated." He took a deep breath. "At most… one year. And that's if he completely stops using his powers starting today."

  The blow was instantaneous.

  The news, cold and surgical like the mage-healer's diagnosis, spread through the corridors of the Tower of Light not as a rumor, but as a sudden frost. One year. The sentence hung over those who knew him, a heavy veil of silence that turned every glance toward Empty into a countdown.

  Raphadun received the information standing, motionless. When the doctor finished, he simply turned and delivered a dry, silent punch against the stone wall. The pain in his knuckles was a minuscule relief compared to the hole opening in his chest. He, who had blindly trusted that indestructible silhouette, felt the ground of his own strength crack. "He knew," the doctor had said. He knew and never complained. The guilt of not noticing was a constant metallic taste in his mouth.

  Luna heard the sentence with the posture of a queen, but her eyes—those green eyes that commanded crowds—were lost in a distant point. Later, locked in her chambers, the facade collapsed. She let herself fall onto the bed, the ceremonial dress heavy as armor of guilt. Memory invaded her, vivid and painful:

  The cutting wind of the Infernal Zone howled around them. Empty, still a walking mystery, pointed to a rare, withered plant stubbornly sprouting between the cracks. Luna, exhausted and starving, grumbled:

  "It's just a dead plant, Empty. It's useless."

  He knelt, ignoring the imminent danger. With infinite patience, he touched the shriveled stem. The darkness of his fingers did not rot the plant—it caused a single, tiny, impossible green bud to unfold before wilting completely.

  Empty looked at her then, and even without words, the message was clear as a punch: 'Nothing is too dead to be worth trying.'

  Raphadun, watching, murmured:

  "He's strange, but… he believes in things we've already given up believing in."

  Luna, back then, merely rolled her eyes.

  "Believing doesn't kill curses, Raphadun. It just distracts us."

  Now, in the oppressive safety of her room, the tears finally came. He was dying because he had never stopped believing—not in the plant, not in her, not in the world.

  Outside Luna's room, in the private council chamber, Bruce Darking remained at the window, his broad back a silhouette against the twilight. One of his servants, a man with an impassive face named Goran, whispered the report.

  "…exhaustible primordial energy, sir. The doctor estimates one year, perhaps less if the effort continues."

  Bruce did not turn. His fingers, capable of crushing skulls, drummed lightly on the stone sill.

  "He knew?"

  "It seems so, sir."

  Luka Graymon was informed in his office, surrounded by arcane engineering schematics. He listened in silence, his purple eyes losing focus on the plans. Without a word, he rose and issued a direct order to his subordinates: all doctors, researchers, and alchemists of the House of Mages were assigned to help Empty in some way. No cost would be spared.

  Theodora Lighting sat with her grandchildren, her presence a veil of trembling dignity. She listened, her intertwined hands holding a linen handkerchief. When Raphadun, voice choked, spoke of the guilt he felt, she extended a hand and placed it over his.

  "You brought him home, Raphadun," she whispered, her voice a worn silk thread, but firm. "You and your sister. You gave him a place. That is not small for someone who… who never had one."

  Flávio and Fencer learned through Raphadun in their modest home. Flávio froze, his ever-present smile frozen into a mask of disbelief. Then his eyes filled with silent, heavy tears.

  "But… he's the strongest person I know," was all he could say, his voice broken.

  Fencer did not cry. He retreated to a corner, his glasses reflecting the faint light. His face was stone, but his fingers trembled slightly. His entire cynical philosophy, his belief that the world only learned through pain, crumbled before that silent and gentle sacrifice. It was the antithesis of everything he understood. Finally, he murmured, more to himself:

  "So he's not a curse. He's a martyr. And we let this happen."

  When Empty awoke in the infirmary, he found the circle of familiar faces around him. Luna, with red eyes but a firm smile. Raphadun, crying. Flávio, trying to hide his tears. Fencer, observing.

  From that day, an unspoken pact was formed. If time were a scarce coin, every moment would be minted in pure gold of memory. Empty, increasingly confined to a wheelchair as his energy waned, became the sun around which that small planetary system orbited.

  But the shadow loomed. Empty felt a deep sadness, not for death, but for impotence. Seeing a curse in the distance and being unable to rise to fight it was an agony worse than any wound. His escape valve was the old Book of Heroes, the battered copy Flávio had gotten for him. He read and reread it, his fingers passing over the illustrations of the armored hero.

  "Look, Empty," Flávio would say, pointing. "The hero always gets up, right? Even when fallen!"

  Empty agreed, smiling.

  Fencer approached, correcting Empty's pronunciation, explaining the meaning of a more complex word. It was in that book, in that silent sharing of stories, that Empty found an echo of his own disfigured purpose.

  Luna divided herself as never before. Her heart was beside Empty, in every visit, in every silent reading they did together. But her duty pulled her toward another abyss: the final preparations for her marriage to Luka. The union was not merely romantic; it was a crucial piece of statecraft. The House of Mages, with its rising technomagic power, needed to be firmly aligned with the core of the prophecy. The marriage would consolidate power, calm the Council, and give the kingdom the symbolic unity it needed for the "new era." She danced on a tightrope between the public queen, radiant and hopeful, and the private friend, carrying an agonizing secret.

  Empty, in his wheelchair, became a familiar sight in the Tower's corridors, always pushed by Flávio, his self-declared champion and carrier. They went to observe the preparations, the decorations, the buzz. Flávio narrated everything with enthusiasm, and Empty listened, a monument of silent attention.

  Raphadun, freed from the heavy shackles of protocol because his power was considered more "tactical" than "symbolic," became the third vertex of the inseparable trio. His days were filled with Empty, Flávio, and Fencer. It was a refuge from the court's pressure, a space where he was not the "queen's brother," but simply Raphadun.

  Yet even in this refuge, the shadow of power did not fully dissipate. Empty, with his sharpened perception for things others did not see, noticed. He noticed the occasional glances Bruce Darking directed at Raphadun. They were not looks of disdain or indifference. They were heavy, calculating, laden with intense and unspoken interest. Raphadun, in turn, seemed aware but avoided the subject.

  And so the days slipped away like sand between fingers. The kingdom's forced joy around the wedding created a cruel contrast with the silent countdown in the heart of that small group.

  Until, finally, the great day approached. The flags were raised, the streets washed, and the last notes of rehearsals echoed through the halls.

  Only a few days remained until the wedding.

  And somewhere deep in every heart that knew the secret, an invisible and implacable clock ticked louder with every setting sun.