Chapter 119: The Report
Nathan woke when the dawn light began filtering through the edge of the curtain.
His body felt different from the day before. The pain was still there, but it had dropped from acute intensity to a dull pressure he could handle without closing his eyes every time he breathed. Selene’s white powder had done what she’d promised: the wounds no longer bled. The ribs still protested any movement of his torso, but the right flank was stable.
He turned slowly to look at the room.
Liaraen wasn’t there.
The chair beside the bed was empty, but the cushion had the fresh indentation of someone who’d been sitting until recently. A folded blanket on the backrest. A closed book on the small table.
Nathan tried to sit up.
He managed to get halfway up before his ribs sent him a pang that stopped him. He stayed like that. Waited thirty seconds for the pain to subside. Then he leaned his back against the pillows Selene had left the night before.
The door opened.
Liaraen entered with a tray.
“Nathan.”
“Sprout.”
“You’re awake.”
“Three minutes ago.”
“Pain?”
“Manageable.”
She set the tray on the small table. Bread, a small bowl of scrambled eggs, water, and the same amber cup from the night before.
Nathan watched her serve.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Two hours.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“I slept what I needed.”
“And Selene?”
“Downstairs. Waiting for you to eat before coming up for the report.”
“Alright.”
Nathan began eating with the spoon. Slower than the night before. His ribs wouldn’t let him lean forward, so Liaraen lifted the bowl to chest height so he wouldn’t have to strain the position.
After the eggs, the bread. After that, the water. At the end, the amber cup.
While he drank the last sip, Liaraen spoke.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“Before Selene comes up, there’s one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“When we report, I’m going to tell the parts of the fight you’re going to omit. The ones I already summarized last night but that she’s going to want in detail. If at any point you want me to stop, you stop me. If you don’t stop me, I continue.”
Nathan looked at her.
“Alright.”
“And Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“The scythe part. Selene is going to want to know everything. Don’t omit the cost.”
“What cost?”
“The emergency manifestation’s. The sacrificed HP. The four-minute margin you had left before dying if Yorel hadn’t fallen fast.”
Nathan processed that.
“Alright.”
“Are you going to say it?”
“I’m going to say it.”
“Good.”
Liaraen lowered the tray. She turned toward the door and opened it without saying anything. A moment later Selene’s footsteps were heard climbing the stairs.
Selene entered. She carried a small notebook under her arm and a closed inkwell in her right hand. Nathan watched her place both on the free small table on the other side of the bed. Then she pulled another chair from the corner of the room and sat down.
Liaraen stayed standing at the foot of the bed. Then she moved to the chair where she’d slept in stretches and sat down too.
Selene opened the notebook.
She took a pen from the inner pocket of her tunic. She dipped it in the inkwell.
She looked at Nathan.
“We begin.”
Nathan began with day one of the mission.
Karak Forest. The absence of Nightbrid. The discovery of the settlement. The blacksmith Yorel who stepped forward from the group to offer himself as contact. The synchronized expressionlessness of the twenty residents when they saw them return with the tree’s meat. Liaraen’s initial theory about the community’s veneration.
Selene wrote without looking up.
Every so often she paused to wet the pen. Nathan waited. Then continued.
When he reached the feast, Liaraen intervened.
“Selene.”
Selene looked up.
“Yes?”
“Nathan is going to omit that he detected the soup’s poison thanks to his previous experience with the mole leader in the dungeon. It’s the second time Soul Sense has warned him of a specific poison because it recognized the signature. It’s not a coincidence. The Class is building its own database of known threats.”
Selene wrote it down.
Nathan looked at her.
“Sprout.”
“What?”
“I was going to say it.”
“You weren’t going to say it.”
“Alright, I wasn’t going to say it.”
“Correct.”
Selene continued.
“Are there other threats Soul Sense has cataloged that way?”
Nathan thought about it.
“Three. The mole leader’s stinger poison. The empowered aura of the Drakain in Karak Forest. And the guardians’ signature that the alpha sent to the final clearing. All three activated without me seeking them. Soul Sense identified them automatically.”
Selene wrote it down.
“And the vidhraki parasite signature in the residents?”
“That one it didn’t catalog automatically. That one I detected by searching. After the feast moment when Liaraen explained to me what it was.”
“Alright.”
Selene kept writing. Then she raised the pen.
“Continue.”
Nathan continued.
He told of the escape from the feast with Yorel. The nighttime ride. The hidden shelter in the side valley. The conversation where he and Liaraen revealed the dual-mode mechanism of the Class to Yorel to explain why they hadn’t fought directly.
Selene stopped at that point.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“You explained to Yorel how your lethal mode works.”
“Correct.”
“In operational detail.”
“Correct.”
“And during those hours in the shelter, Yorel was faking horror at the settlement’s infection while already being himself the practitioner of the complete plan.”
“Correct.”
“Which means Yorel absorbed the information about your Class before the final plan’s execution.”
“Correct.”
“And he used it against you during the next day’s fight by redirecting the alpha’s killing intent to the residents.”
Nathan nodded.
“Alright.”
Selene didn’t comment. She kept writing.
But Nathan noticed the notes had become denser in that specific section. More ink per line.
Liaraen intervened again, with a calm voice.
“Selene.”
“Yes?”
“Nathan blames himself for having explained to Yorel. He’s not going to say it but he’s been thinking about it since yesterday on the road.”
Nathan turned his head toward her.
“Sprout.”
“What?”
“That’s not information necessary for the operational report.”
“It’s information necessary for Selene to understand how you’re going to make similar decisions in the future.”
Selene set the pen on the edge of the inkwell.
She looked at Nathan.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“Liaraen is right. It’s relevant.”
“Alright.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
Nathan looked away toward the window.
For a few seconds.
Then he looked back at Selene.
“Yes. Yorel presented himself as a victim. We talked to him as if he were an ally. And at some point, probably when I gave him the full detail of lethal mode, I handed him the weapon he used to trap me the next day. If I hadn’t explained, the alpha wouldn’t have known how to redirect. The twenty residents wouldn’t have been mobilized as a shield. The fight would have been direct.”
Selene nodded once.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“That’s a reasonable reading of the event. But I want to propose an alternative to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Yorel had been planning this ritual for twenty years. During those twenty years, his contact with travelers was a constant source of information. It’s likely he’d already assembled a tentative profile of your Class before you arrived at the settlement. It’s possible he’d even selected you as a possible additional victim of the ritual once he learned a Hunter with an unusual Class was operating in Greywall.”
“Possible.”
“And it’s possible he waited for you in the shelter precisely because he suspected you’d want to explain to him to justify the withdrawal. That is, it may be that the revelation you made to him wasn’t what armed him. It may have been only the confirmation of what he already knew.”
Nathan processed that.
“Is there a way to verify which of the two options is correct?”
“Not with the available information. But the emotional weight is different. If you handed him the weapon, you carry the complete decision. If he already had it and you only confirmed, the weight drops. I have no way to decide which is the truth. What I can say is that you shouldn’t assume the worst interpretation by default when the best interpretation is as plausible as the worst.”
Nathan looked at her.
For a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Alright.”
“Continue.”
Nathan continued.
The morning plan. The northwest clearing Yorel selected. The alpha’s invocation by eliminating four nearby guardians. The creature’s appearance. The failed negotiation. The initial combat.
When he reached the phase where the alpha redirected the killing intent, Selene stopped him again.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“Pause here.”
Selene set the pen aside. She closed the notebook with a finger between the pages to mark the position. And she looked at Nathan directly.
“What you’re going to tell now is the most operationally important part.”
“I know.”
“And it’s the part you understand least because it happened to you during a high-intensity fight.”
“Also correct.”
“I’m going to ask you specific questions. Answer with the maximum detail you can. If you don’t know something, say so. Don’t invent.”
“Alright.”
“Did the alpha redirect the killing intent in a single act, or was it progressive?”
Nathan thought about it.
“A single act. From one second to the next. The alpha’s killing intent signature switched off. In the same instant, the residents’ intensified.”
“Was the total intensity conserved, or did it change?”
“It was conserved. It was the same mass of killing intent, redistributed.”
“How did you know?”
“Soul Sense showed it to me as accumulated pressure. The total pressure was the same before and after. Only the origin changed.”
Selene wrote it down.
“During the following minutes, did the alpha reabsorb part of the killing intent or keep it distributed?”
“Kept it distributed. I verified several times during the evasion. Its own signature remained neutral. The residents maintained complete intensity.”
“This is important. The Draken doctrine Yorel practiced includes some type of emotional transfer technique between hosts.”
“Yorel admitted that the fusion gave him access to the parasite’s abilities. The killing intent transfer probably came from that fusion, not from the doctrine.”
Selene wrote it down.
“And during the containment phase, when you were evading the residents, did the alpha attempt other redirections?”
“No. It stayed still. Waiting for me to collapse.”
“Did you observe whether Yorel mounted on the alpha was doing anything during that phase?”
Nathan thought about it.
For nearly a minute.
“No. Yorel was still too. Which suggests the redirection was a one-time act, not something that required continuous maintenance.”
“That’s useful information. It means that if another practitioner uses the same technique against a bearer of a Class similar to yours, the bearer has a time window to counterattack the practitioner himself before he makes a second redirection.”
Nathan nodded.
“Alright.”
Selene continued.
“Next question. Was the residents’ killing intent signature identical to the one the alpha had had, or were there differences?”
“Differences. It was more fragmented. Twenty small signatures with the same total intensity as one large signature. The form was different.”
“Did your Class’s abilities respond the same to both forms?”
“That’s the trap. My lethal mode activates by accumulated pressure toward me, not by the form of the pressure. The twenty small signatures activated lethal mode the same as the alpha’s large signature. And since the alpha no longer had the signature, the lethal mode automatically directed to the residents.”
“Correct. Which means the Class treats the set of infected hosts as a unified threat. It doesn’t distinguish between the host’s own will and imposed will.”
“Correct.”
Selene wrote it down.
For a few seconds.
Then she looked up.
“Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“This is a problem.”
“I know.”
“If in the future you face another scenario where a main consciousness controls a group of innocent hosts, your Class is going to put you in the same position. And you’re not always going to have Liaraen with the lineage sword available to resolve it through an alternative channel.”
Nathan looked at her.
For a few seconds.
“Is there a way to modify the Class’s behavior?”
“I don’t know. There has never been another bearer of the seventeenth’s Seal that I know of to compare notes with. But the possibility exists. The Seal responds to the bearer. If you develop a way to distinguish own will from imposed will in the detection of killing intent, it’s possible the Class incorporates that distinction.”
“Practical.”
“Deliberate practice. And probably theory too. We’re going to have to look for documentation on mind control and host manipulation in the Veil archives. If prior literature exists, even from centuries ago, it can help.”
Nathan nodded.
“Alright.”
Selene picked up the pen again.
“Continue the report.”
Nathan continued.