The moment I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the familiar ceiling of my room. My hands were heavily bandaged, and I could feel the tug of small dressings scattered across my skin, protecting the wounds from that night.
I tried to get up, but a miscalculation cost me dearly. An intense, searing pain in my ribs hit me like a physical blow, forcing the air out of my lungs.
"It seems you're awake," Lygni's voice came from beside me.
She was sitting in the shadows, her posture impeccable, watching me with an intensity that suggested she had been there for a long time, analyzing my every breath.
"Yeah... just resting for a bit," I replied, my voice raspy as I fought through the agony to sit up on the edge of the bed. Every movement felt like an immense struggle.
She stood up and walked toward me. Her footsteps were silent, yet her presence filled the room in an overwhelming way. Her eyes, as sharp as the blades she carried, never left my face.
"I leave for a few days, only to return and find the territory crawling with mercenaries," she said. Her blue eyes seemed frozen, watching me with a surgical coldness, as if demanding a detailed explanation for such negligence.
My ribs ached intensely; every breath was a battle against a sharp sting radiating through my chest.
"Well... merchants revealed themselves to be mercenaries," I began, measuring my words as I watched her. "I didn't know what they truly were. I only found out after the scroll had already been signed."
Lygni didn't respond immediately. She walked calmly to the window, staring at the horizon for a moment before turning back to me. The morning light highlighted the stiffness in her expression.
"What would you have done if I hadn't arrived in time?" she questioned, her voice devoid of emotion but heavy with an implicit challenge.
I struggled to breathe, feeling the weight of her gaze pressing down on me. I could have made an excuse or begged for protection, but I didn't look away.
"Then I would have died fighting," I finally said.
Lygni said nothing at first. She simply turned her gaze back to the window, watching the movement outside as silence stretched across the room.
"Obrem and Liss were worried," she said, still without taking her eyes off the glass. "It seems you've already managed to influence a few people into joining this suicidal struggle of yours."
She finally looked at me again, and there was a note of estrangement in her tone, as if she were trying to reconcile the prince she once knew with the man she saw now.
I stood up with difficulty, feeling every muscle protest and my ribs throb in agony. I leaned against the nearby furniture to keep from faltering.
"Did any of the villagers die?" I asked, my concern overriding the physical pain.
She simply shook her head—a short, dry motion.
"I arrived in time to stop people who don't even know how to hold a sword from fighting for a lost cause," she replied, her voice laced with that brutal honesty so characteristic of her.
I walked to the window where she stood and looked out at the people below. It was strange. When I lost consciousness, the true Aether's awareness had awakened, and with it came memories that weren't my own. What I saw in those visions left me nervous and, at the same time, anxious.
In those memories, I saw her.
I looked at Lygni now; she always wore the same cold expression, an impenetrable mask. But in my vision—in that fragmented memory I had just witnessed—she looked young, almost vulnerable, an image that clashed brutally with the overwhelming strength I felt radiating from her now. The contrast was disturbing. Why, even after seeing that side of her, did the true Aether call her the "King's little lapdog" with such contempt? What were those memories hiding about the past that bound them together?
I felt her gaze burning through me, piercing, as if she were trying to read the thoughts I could barely organize myself.
"I think I owe the people an apology," I said, forcing my body to move toward the door.
"Why would you do something like that?" she questioned, her voice tinged with genuine curiosity, perhaps for the first time.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, feeling the weight of my own words.
"Because I want to be a leader, not a tyrant," I replied, opening the door with difficulty as the pain in my ribs flared. "That's the difference between a true leader and a king who simply rots away on his throne."
I left the room without waiting for a response. I needed space. I needed to understand what the old Aether's life had been like. The images still flickered through my mind like live coals: the vision of the woman who embraced him with tenderness, followed by the biting cold of her funeral. The way he was treated with disdain, humiliated simply for not having pure blood, bothered me deeply. Seeing the marks of his torture... it sparked an irritation I couldn't control.
Why are these feelings so vivid within me? I wondered, feeling my pulse quicken. Why is this affecting me so much, when I am someone else?
And above all, there was that voice echoing in the back of my mind, dark and enigmatic: "You are not ready yet."
What did that mean? Questions upon questions surrounded me, suffocating me. I didn't have the answers, but I had a clear objective. I needed to make Valereach prosper as quickly as possible.