Chapter 81 - A piece of truth

  The Light pulsed between us.

  It did not fade after the hunter’s death. It thickened.

  Jori did not wait for me to gather myself. He wiped the blade of light clean with a flick of his wrist, though no stain clung to it, and turned toward the path that led back to the cliffs. The glow beneath his skin had not dimmed. If anything, it seemed to move with greater intention now, as though it had found a deeper current to follow.

  “We return,” he said simply.

  The wind had shifted. The grass no longer bent in uneasy waves but lay low, as if pressed down by something unseen.

  I followed him.

  The path to Anxio’s cave felt shorter than before, though my legs were unsteady. Each step echoed with the hunter’s words. Infected. Abominations. Consumed. They clung to my thoughts like burrs. The Light inside me, usually warm and steady, felt restless, almost curious.

  The cave mouth yawned black against the rock face. The air inside was cooler, damp with the scent of stone and age. Torches burned low along the walls, their flames thin and quiet, as though reluctant to intrude.

  Anxio lay where we had left him.

  He seemed smaller than before. Not merely weakened, but eroded. His skin clung to his bones, parchment-thin. His hair, once silver, now looked closer to white ash. His breathing came shallow, each inhale a fragile thread.

  But when Jori stepped forward, the air changed.

  Anxio’s eyes opened.

  They fixed immediately on Jori’s hands.

  “You have it,” Anxio whispered.

  Jori knelt without hesitation.

  I stayed near the entrance, my heart beating too fast. I could feel the new Light within him. It hummed differently from his own, slightly discordant, like a note added to a chord that had once been pure.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Jori did not answer me.

  Instead, he extended his arm.

  For a moment, I thought he meant to offer his hand.

  He did not.

  He pressed his forearm against Anxio’s chest, just above the heart.

  The Light erupted.

  Not violently, not outward, but inward. It did not flare into the cave. It tunneled. I saw it travel from Jori’s skin into Anxio’s body, a current flowing through a narrow channel. The cave walls shimmered faintly as if reacting to the transfer.

  Jori’s jaw tightened.

  Anxio convulsed.

  His back arched off the stone slab, fingers clawing at nothing. The torches flickered wildly. The Light around them thickened into something almost visible, like mist lit from within.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I staggered forward despite myself. “Stop! You’re hurting him!”

  Anxio’s mouth opened in a silent cry.

  Then the tremor changed.

  It was no longer violent.

  It was stabilizing.

  The hollowness in his cheeks softened. Not filled, not restored, but less sunken. The tremor in his hands eased. His spine straightened a fraction. The veins at his temples, once faint and grey, seemed to pulse with faint color.

  He looked… younger.

  Not by decades.

  By something subtler. By vitality.

  The Light dimmed.

  Jori pulled his arm away slowly, breath ragged. The glow beneath his skin had thinned. He swayed slightly but caught himself.

  Anxio exhaled.

  A full breath.

  I stared.

  This was not healing.

  It was replenishment.

  Anxio turned his head toward Jori. “Leave us,” he murmured.

  Jori hesitated only a second. He glanced at me, something unreadable in his expression, then rose and walked past without a word.

  The cave felt larger once he was gone.

  Anxio pushed himself upright with visible effort. Even that small motion would have seemed impossible earlier. He took a step toward me. Another.

  I backed up instinctively.

  “What is it that frightens you?” he asked.

  His voice was steadier now, though still thin.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said. My throat felt dry. “You let him… you let Jori take something from that man. And now you take it from Jori. What is the purpose of this? Is this what we are?”

  Anxio studied me with eyes that no longer looked dulled by exhaustion. There was weight in them. Depth.

  “It frightens you because you think the Light is wild,” he said softly. “Untamed. A blessing that falls where it will.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He shook his head once.

  “No.”

  He took another step closer. I could feel the Light inside him now. It did not feel borrowed. It felt anchored.

  “Jori knows something you do not,” he continued. “He understands what the hunter understood. What they all fear.”

  I swallowed. “And what is that?”

  Anxio’s gaze did not waver.

  “I am not merely a bearer of the Light, Gemma.”

  The cave seemed to narrow around us.

  “I am its foundation.”

  The words meant nothing at first. They hung in the air like a foreign language.

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered.

  “I know.”

  He drew in another breath, slower this time.

  “You must prepare yourself,” he said. “What I am about to tell you will fracture the way you see yourself. It will not feel gentle.”

  My pulse pounded in my ears.

  “Say it,” I said.

  Anxio’s eyes softened, not with pity, but with something closer to sorrow.

  “You did not awaken with the Light because you were chosen by chance,” he said.

  The torches flickered low.

  “You did not carry it from birth as a miracle.”

  The Light inside my chest stirred uneasily.

  “Gemma,” he said, voice barely above a whisper now, “you have the Light because of me.”

  The words struck harder than any blast.

  “No,” I said immediately, though I did not know what I was denying.

  “Yes.”

  He lifted a trembling hand and placed it gently against his own chest.

  “The Light does not scatter randomly across the world. It flows from a source. It radiates outward. It threads itself into those who can hold it.”

  My breath came shallow.

  “You are not born with it,” he continued. “You are linked to it.”

  “To you?” I asked, the word catching in my throat.

  “To me.”

  Silence settled between us.

  The tremor in my chest was no longer anticipation before violence. It was something deeper. Something foundational shifting.

  “That’s not possible,” I said. “I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Before I ever saw you. Before I knew my name.”

  Anxio’s expression did not change.

  “Distance does not sever a root,” he replied. “You felt it because it was already reaching for you.”

  The cave felt colder.

  “If you are the source,” I whispered, “Why are you like this?”

  Anxio held my gaze.

  “That,” he said quietly, “is why you are here.”