Chapter 19: Death Reversed

"The instructors told me your core cracked! They told me your soul pathways had turned into shattered porcelain! I went to the infirmary and there was an empty stretcher with blood on it, and I thought, ’This is it, Rowan, your only friend is in the Netherworld and now the third-year earth-magic brutes are going to steal your lunch money every single day until graduation!’ I almost jumped off the floating plateau, Lucien! I stood by the edge of the sky-dock for forty minutes! But the wind was too cold and the drop looked really, really high, so I ate a meat pie and cried in the bushes instead!"

Lucien blinked down at the trembling heap of noble youth.

’A cold, stoic, vengeful saboteur?’ Lucien thought, his soul practically detaching from his physical body in sheer disbelief.

’A shadowy puppet master of the underground syndicates?! This guy isn’t a villain! He’s an eighth-grader who just dropped his ice cream on the pavement! He’s a guy with a minor baronial peerage!’

"Rowan," Lucien said, his voice flat, exhausted, and desperately trying to salvage his linen duvet. "Rowan, unclamp your jaws from my blanket. You are snotting onto my four-hundred-thread-count fabric."

"I CAN’T HELP IT! THE TEARS WON’T STOP! MY EYES ARE LEAKING LIKE A BROKEN RAIN BARREL!" Rowan sobbed, his voice ascending into that frantic, hyperventilating squeak that made dogs three neighborhoods over tilt their ears.

"Why did you do that?! Why did you push me, you absolute lunatic?! Do you know how heavy an Abyssal Crawler is?! Its legs look like giant hairy crab legs! It smelled like rotten eggs and sour milk! I was supposed to be the one who died! I’m just a third-son baron with C-Rank wind affinity that can barely inflate a party balloon! You’re a Duke’s son! If you died, Duke Darius would have used my skull as a paperweight!"

Rowan began rocking back and forth violently, his grip on Lucien’s leg tightening until Lucien’s circulation was genuinely threatened.

"And then! And then that bastard Young Lord Valemont! He was standing in the plaza! I saw him! I was hiding behind a decorative cedar shrub, and I saw him bow to you! The broadsheets say he wants to duel you! They say he wants to challenge you to a blood-oath because you insulted his tactical acumen! We’re going to die, Lucien! The Seven Ancient Families are going to assassinate us in our sleep! I already packed my bags! I have two pairs of undergarments, seven loaves of rye bread, and a stolen map of the southern border! Let’s drop out! Let’s buy a small pig farm in the neutral territories! I can herd the pigs using minor air currents and you can do the accounting!"

Lucien stared at his hysterical, hyperventilating friend for three long seconds.

Then, with the practiced precision of someone dealing with an erratic, legacy codebase that refused to compile, Lucien reached down, grabbed Rowan by the scruff of his messy collar, and lifted him upward with surprising firmness.

"Rowan."

"WE CAN NAME THE FIRST PIG LUCIEN JUNIOR—"

"Rowan!" Lucien raised his voice, delivering a sharp, crisp, open-palmed tap directly to the boy’s forehead.

Slap!

Rowan’s eyes crossed.

The torrential stream of panic abruptly cut off with a tiny, wet hiccup. "Ow?!"

"Breathe," Lucien commanded, pointing a stern finger at the boy’s chest. "In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Stop vibrating. You are rattling the porcelain teacups on the dresser."

Rowan sniffled violently, inhaling a massive, shuddering breath that sounded like a vacuum cleaner choking on a sock. "In... out..."

"Good. Now, look at me." Lucien gestured to his own face. "Do I look like a corpse?"

Rowan squinted through his swollen, red-rimmed eyes. "...No. You look annoyingly well-rested. And your hair is too shiny!"

"Do I look like a man who is being hunted by the Valemont Ducal House?"

"Well... the broadsheets said—"

"The broadsheets are written by desperate, ink-stained gremlins who manufacture romantic drama to pay their tuition," Lucien said dryly, grabbing a clean silk handkerchief from the nightstand and aggressively shoving it into Rowan’s face. "Come on. Blow your nose. You look like a drowned possum."

Rowan obediently took the handkerchief and emitted a honking noise so loud and resonant that it briefly sounded like an imperial war horn sounding the retreat.

As Rowan wiped his face, sniffling pathetically, Lucien leaned back against his pillows, his mind rapidly constructing the grand timeline of the next twelve months.

The Sunken Catacombs incident was the catalyst, Lucien analyzed, his inner software engineer calculating branching dependencies.

In the original novel, Lucien dies here, and Rowan falls into despair, becomes bitter, and spirals into villainy.

A year from now, at the end of the second year, comes the Great Frost-Peak Expedition, the mandatory continental ruins sweep where the Astra Party makes their second catastrophic tactical blunder, resulting in the slaughter of another thirty auxiliary students and Rowan’s formal descent into treason.

Lucien looked down at the boy currently blowing his nose on expensive silk.

’If I’m alive... then Rowan doesn’t become a bitter, vengeful saboteur. He just stays a weeping, useless, neurotic mess. That’s good. That’s manageable. A crybaby doesn’t ally with the Eclipsed Hand, he just hides under the bed whenever thunder rumbles.’

"Lucien?" Rowan whispered, his voice small, clutching the crumpled handkerchief like a security blanket. "Are you really okay? What did the healers say about your core?"

Lucien let out a slow, luxurious sigh, a faint, contented smirk spreading across his lips.

"The healers," Lucien said, relish dripping from every syllable, "have concluded that my mana core has suffered irreversible, utterly delightful trauma."

Rowan gasped in horror. "DELIGHTFUL?! LUCIEN, YOUR FUTURE IS RUINED!"

"No, Rowan. My future has just been miraculously saved," Lucien purred, leaning forward with glittering eyes.

"Listen to the sweet, administrative poetry of my diagnosis. Because my mana pathways have suffered ’abnormal spiritual dissonance,’ the Imperial Academy’s Academic Board conducted a preliminary magical resonance sweep yesterday afternoon."