“Get it together, Dad! You better not die on me!”
The spark of life was disappearing right in my arms. His breathing was growing shallower by the second. I wanted to keep him awake, even for a second longer, so I slapped my old man across the face.
“I cast a spell! Your wounds are all closed up now! Ya just gotta hold on a little longer! C’mon!”
My hand, sticky with blood, had left a red print across my father’s pale face.
“God…!”
I’d never in my life, in all my memory, genuinely begged a god for anything.
But now the only hope I had left was a prayer for a miracle that would save my dad’s life. If any god could only grant me that, I’d dedicate all my worldly possessions, everything in my ability, my whole future to them. If my dad could live, I would have given up on my goal of becoming a summoner and made myself a disciple.
“Why…? Why did it come to this? Dad, what did you do?!”
The flimsy front door had been left open, letting the unseasonal gusts from a blizzard whip at us mercilessly. Farther down the entryway, it was pitch-black, as though life had been breathed into the shadows themselves, which were buffeting us with unforgiving snow.
“Who’d stab a penniless farmer?!”
The light of the candles hanging from the ceiling heartlessly illuminated the pool of blood that had gathered on my father’s torso.
I had no idea how many attempts I’d made at a healing spell.
If I’d only been there when my dad had been struck, I never would have broken down like this. The stab wound, which had reached deep enough to hit his liver, would have sent me reeling even then, but I would’ve held out a faint line of hope and been able to concentrate on healing him.
“Keep your eyes open, Pa! You’ve…you’ve gotta live! Are ya gonna leave me all alone?!”
This was the limitation of healing magic. Through the manipulation of time, a wound could be recuperated, but the blood lost could not. When I came home to find my dad unresponsive on the ground, I thought for a second that it was all over. That he’d lost too much blood. That a healing spell would be too late for him.
“Say something, man! Wake up and talk to me!”
Even if I averted my eyes from the ghastly sight I didn’t want to see, the warm liquid flowing from the wound on his torso and onto my hands, my own stomach, and my thighs whispered the fate of the only blood relative I had left.
“Fe…il…”
As he rested in my arms, my dad’s right hand slowly stirred. Even as his hand weakly trembled, he managed to bring it to the inner pocket of his coat and produced a small hemp bag, telling me, “Th-this… Take this… You can…go to school…when you’re sixteen, right…?”
The bag clinked, revealing its contents to be coins.
In that moment when I realized what had happened, I clasped my dad’s hand over the bag. “Who cares ’bout money?! Who cares?! If you’re not here, what does it matter if I become a summoner if no one’s there to see it?!” My face crumpled.
He seemed startled by that, but he didn’t have the time or energy to even give me a strained smile. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
At the very end, he looked regretful. He looked pained, as though he could have broken out into tears at any moment. “It wasn’t supposed to—”
I gritted my teeth so hard, they felt as if they were about to crack. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you, dammit.” I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face, and I didn’t even bother to wipe the snot from my nose.
Then, suddenly, all the strength left my body, and my entire mind was overtaken by lethargy.
With my dad still in my arms, the tears and snot still running down my face, I had frozen.
Eventually, I tried to wipe my wet face with my bloodied left hand, and that was when I awoke from my dream.
“That was…awful.”
When I opened my eyelids, I found that I was lying on top of a rock. Because of how heart-wrenching my dream had been, waking up was rough, to say the least. My back was fully exposed, and both my shoulders felt cold as ice.
Where was I? And how had I fallen asleep?
I tried setting aside the memories of my dream as I grasped for anything familiar, but that got me no closer to my answers. I’d been working late into the night—at least until one o’clock—and made a hasty retreat back to the dorms, where I’d drawn out the last of my strength to get into the communal baths…and that was where my memories puttered off. It was almost as though everything after soaking into the water had been wiped clean.
“That was close… I was almost a goner…”
I groaned from relief as I realized I’d avoided drowning, then I slapped a hand on the rock floor to heave myself up. Apparently, I’d lost consciousness at the edge of the bath and collapsed facedown with my upper half clear out of the water. The rest of me was still soaking.
Thanks to the enchanted lights lining the ceiling, the bath was lit bright as daylight.
Seeing as I worked late nights, I was grateful the baths were generously open twenty-four seven, but the prospect of falling asleep in them frightened me. If I died like that, well, I’d never be able to live with myself.
“Ahh…”
I leaned along the side of the bath and sunk down to my neck. Once my back and shoulders got warm again, I needed to scram. What time was it anyway?
As I was thinking that, I looked up.
“What the…?!”
As I lifted my face, I saw someone standing right in front of me, legs in a wide, imposing stance. The shock nearly killed me all over again, and I couldn’t back away because I was at the edge of the bath.
“So you’re finally awake.”
A beautiful girl with platinum-blond hair looked down at me. Through the thin layer of steam, I could see she was wearing a pure-white robe.
I realized who was towering before me, her arms crossed—it was Sasha Shidoh Zultania.
But wait…the robe itself was already thin, and wet as it was, it clung to her so closely that she might as well have been wearing nothing at all. She also had her arms crossed right below her heaving bust. Her cinched waist made her hips look even more alluring.
She was as radiant as a goddess, so much so that she could’ve seduced a saint, or a dragon of yore, or other such mythical figures.
“You scared me half to death! …Can’t believe I’m in the bath with a princess.”
“No, you scared me. The moment I get in, I run into Feil Fonaf himself hanging off the edge of the tub.”
“Ya should’ve just woken me up.”
“I did, in fact, make an attempt to shake you awake, but you didn’t even stir. So I decided to observe you for a while instead. You were very quiet… A first for you.”
She was still looking straight down at me without batting an eye. I started to wonder if she felt even an ounce of shyness over the fact that I was staring right back at her.
From midnight to dawn, the bath hardly got any visitors, so it was open to everyone during that time, meaning that anyone living in the dorms—male or female—could use it. But it was common courtesy not to use the bath when someone of the opposite sex was already in it. Besides, I was pretty sure Sasha’s room had a private bath anyway. The highest-ranking students in their respective years were all assigned special luxury rooms.