Chapter 470: Because I Want To

The first seventeen minutes of Neria being alone in Mirath passed without any problems.

On the eighteenth, Ester appeared in the courtyard.

Neria was sitting on the stone bench near the training area, watching Jian Yue and Xue Lian practice. She did not seem exhausted, her breathing remained steady and the small plant-like structures visible beneath her skin maintained the same coloration as before.

Even so, Ester stopped in front of her.

"It’s over." The healer extended one hand, making it clear that their previous negotiation had very objective limits.

Neria looked at her with an almost offended expression.

"We negotiated seventeen minutes." She discreetly pointed toward the courtyard, as if there were still some legal possibility of remaining there.

"And eighteen have passed." Ester kept her hand extended, showing no intention of yielding.

Neria looked at Damon, who was leaning against a nearby column.

He immediately raised both hands.

"Don’t look at me. I wasn’t present when the treaty was signed." Damon preferred not to get involved in a negotiation that had already been lost before it even began.

"Coward." Neria accepted Ester’s hand and slowly stood.

"Experienced." Damon smiled while the two began heading back inside.

Jian Yue interrupted her training for a few seconds.

"She’s adapting quickly." She watched Neria disappear down the corridor before sheathing her sword.

Damon looked in the same direction.

"I don’t know if she’s adapting or discovering how many rules she can negotiate before Ester notices." He already knew that method better than he would have liked.

"You taught her."

"I take no responsibility for that."

Xue Lian approached with her spear resting on her shoulder.

"You’re the worst possible person to deny influence."

Damon looked at the two of them.

"I’m starting to miss when everyone was afraid of me."

Jian Yue smiled.

"When was that?"

He decided to leave.

The afternoon remained peaceful. Neria spent part of it with Aurelia examining some of the records that had been brought from Vermillion. She was not looking for details about the experiments performed on her. That was still something she preferred to approach in small portions. She was mainly interested in records from before her own capture, trying to understand how much of the world had changed during the one hundred and seventeen years she had remained imprisoned.

Damon found the two of them in front of a map.

Neria had a suspicious expression.

"This didn’t exist." She pointed toward a small city marked north of Mirath.

"It was founded eighty-nine years ago." Aurelia moved her finger toward another region. "This one is also recent."

Neria stared at it.

"Recent for you or for me?"

Aurelia stopped.

Damon, who had just entered, began to smile.

"Finally someone asked the right question." He approached the table.

Aurelia gave him a look.

"Eighty-nine years is recent for me and not recent for her." The answer came with enough dignity to make it clear that the discussion about age remained forbidden.

Neria ran her eyes over the map.

"When I was taken, there was a road here." She indicated a strip of territory where a small forested area now appeared.

"It disappeared approximately fifty years ago."

"And that river?"

"It changed course after a landslide."

Neria fell silent.

Damon realized that, until then, she had handled the passage of time better than he had expected. Perhaps because Vermillion had functioned like a closed world. Inside the laboratory, years and decades did not change walls, corridors or machines in any truly noticeable way.

A map was different.

It showed everything that had continued without her.

"Is it strange?" Damon asked.

Neria did not look away.

"It’s irritating." She touched one of the new roads with the tip of her finger. "The world had the audacity to continue."

Damon let out a small laugh.

"It has that habit."

Neria smiled, but remained in front of the map for a while longer. Then she asked Aurelia to show her Mirath from one hundred and twenty years earlier.

Aurelia found an approximate record.

Neria looked.

Mirath practically did not exist.

The region had small scattered settlements, a few trade routes and an insignificant administrative structure near the place where the city would later grow.

"So all of this happened while I was imprisoned." Neria said without open bitterness, merely stating a fact.

"Yes." Aurelia did not try to soften it.

Neria took a deep breath.

"I want to see more tomorrow." She closed the map herself, deciding that it was enough for that day.

Damon noticed.

Not because Ester had established a limit.

Neria had established her own.

That might have been more important.

That night, however, the first real problem of staying away from Eir appeared.

It was not serious.

Not even painful.

Neria woke shortly after midnight feeling cold.

She tried to ignore it for a few minutes, until she realized the cold was not coming from the room. Her hands were cold, and so were her feet, but the rest of her body maintained a normal temperature.

She called Ester.

Damon found out because Ester knocked on his door a few minutes later.

He opened it still half asleep.

"What happened?" The question immediately became more serious when he saw she was fully dressed.

"Neria showed a circulatory change." Ester was already heading back down the corridor, expecting him to follow.

"Serious?"

"It doesn’t seem so."

"Then why did you call me?"

Ester looked at him.

"Because she asked."

That ended any complaint.

Neria was sitting on the bed when they arrived, covered up to the waist. Aurelia was already examining a projection of the plant-like structures near her abdomen while Ester checked the circulation in her extremities.

Damon stopped near the door.

"You look alive." He observed her face before approaching.

"Thanks for the diagnosis." Neria rubbed her hands together.

"What happened?"

Ester answered before she could.

"One of the modifications she decided to keep is reducing activity."

Damon looked at the projection.

It was one of the structures responsible for controlling how much energy Neria absorbed from Eir. It had been created by the Order to allow her to remain near the entity without suffering overload. Away from the forest, however, it had practically no function.

"So it’s shutting down?" Damon asked.

"Not exactly." Aurelia enlarged an area nearby. "Her body is redirecting circulation around the structure."

"Is that bad?"

"We don’t know yet."

Neria exhaled.

"That phrase comes up a lot."

"Because bodies are inconvenient," Ester replied while pressing two fingers against her pulse.

Damon observed the projection for a few more seconds.

A very small new route was forming around the regulator. It was not an ancestral channel. It was not something Eir had placed. It also did not appear to be a modification from the Order.

It was Neria’s tissue.

Her own body reorganizing itself around a structure it did not currently need to use.

"It’s doing the same thing mine did with the shoulder." Damon pointed toward the route.

Aurelia nodded.

"In principle, yes. But in a slower and more structural way."

Neria became serious.

"Is it trying to remove it?"

"No," Ester replied. "It’s trying to maintain circulation without depending on it."

"And when I go back to Eir?"

"Maybe it’ll use it again. Maybe it’ll keep both pathways."

"Can it choose?"

Ester thought before answering.

"Your body can. You can choose what we do afterward."

Neria looked at her own hands.

The temperature was already slowly returning.

"Then don’t touch it."

Ester raised her eyes.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I want to see what it does."

"No provocation."

"No provocation."

"If the circulation gets worse, I intervene."

Neria nodded.

"Agreed."

Damon noticed that she had not asked what the original state was.

Nor which alteration belonged to the Order.

Nor which form would be considered more correct.

The only question had been whether it was causing harm.

And at that moment, it was not.

Shortly afterward, the temperature in her hands returned almost completely to normal.

Ester ordered rest.

Neria did not argue.

Damon stayed behind when Aurelia and Ester left.

Neria looked at him.

"You stayed because I asked them to call you." She seemed slightly embarrassed by the admission.

"I figured."

"You didn’t need to."

"You asked."

She fell silent.

The answer seemed familiar.

Damon noticed too.

"That’s becoming a theme around here."

Neria smiled.

"My mother liked that answer."

"I know."

She settled more comfortably into the bed.

"It was strange when my hands got cold."

"Fear?"

"A little."

Damon pulled over a chair.

"After one hundred and seventeen years with machines deciding when something in your body was a problem, I imagine any change is irritating."

Neria stared at him.

"You got good at that."

"At what?"

"Saying reasonable things without turning everything into a speech."

"Don’t tell anyone."

She smiled again.

A few minutes later, Damon left the room.

The next morning, Neria woke without any changes.

The new circulatory route remained small.

The Order’s regulator remained intact.

Nothing had defeated anything.

The two simply coexisted.

Ester looked almost satisfied.

"If it stays like this, we don’t need to do anything." She closed the projection after the examination.

Neria sat up.

"That’s a strange sentence coming from you."

"I do many things precisely so I won’t need to do things later."

Damon, near the window, pointed.

"That was almost philosophical."

"Get out."

He left.

Neria’s second day without Eir was easier.

She walked a little more, rested before Ester told her to, looked at maps again and spent almost an hour with Jian Li learning about absurdly ordinary things.

Like locks.

Neria knew mechanisms far more complex.

Even so, she was impressed by the fact that people used small pieces of metal to control who could enter a room.

"My mother would like this," she said while turning a key between her fingers.

Jian Li smiled.

"She liked the idea of a room."

"Because it was hers."

"Exactly."

Neria looked at the key.

"Can I have one?"

"For your room?"

"Yes."

Jian Li handed it over.

Neria closed her hand around it.

"Then no one can enter?"

"Not without your permission."

"Not even Ester?"

Jian Li hesitated.

"In an emergency, probably Ester."

Neria grimaced.

"Then almost no one."

Damon, passing through the corridor at that moment, heard.

"You discovered the flaw in the system."

Neria put the key away.

"I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that."

In the afternoon, a message arrived from Eir.

Short.

NERIA WELL?

Damon showed it to her.

Neria took the tablet and wrote by herself.

It took quite a while.

The digital lettering did not need to be pretty, but she still chose the words carefully.

I’M FINE. MY HANDS GOT COLD. ESTER EXPLAINS BETTER. YOU DON’T NEED TO COME.

The response took a while.

I WANT TO COME.

Neria closed her eyes.

Damon tried not to laugh.

She wrote:

I KNOW. YOU DON’T NEED TO.

Another pause.

ALL RIGHT.

Neria kept staring.

"She’s suffering."

"Probably."

"Do you think I was cruel?"

"No."

"She wants to help."

"I know."

"Then why does it feel bad to say no?"

Damon leaned against the table.

"Because caring about someone doesn’t make what they want stop mattering just because what you want is different."

Neria became thoughtful.

"Does that apply to mothers too?"

"Especially."

She let out a small laugh.

Then sent another message.

I’M COMING BACK TOMORROW. BECAUSE I WANT TO.

The response came almost immediately.

I WANT THAT TOO.

Neria smiled.

"Better."

"Much better."

On the third day, Neria did not try to prove anything else.

Maybe because she already had.

She woke up, ate breakfast, walked through the courtyard, spent some time watching the training sessions and had lunch with everyone. Ester performed the final examination early in the afternoon and confirmed that her body had sustained three days outside Eir’s territory without any artificial support.

Not perfectly.

But on its own.

Neria stared at the projection for a long time.

"So I can."

"You can," Ester replied.

"For how long?"

"I don’t know."

Neria smiled.

"Good answer."

Damon was leaning against the door.

She looked at him.

"I’m going back today."

"I know."

"Not because I need to."

"I know."

"Because I want to."

Damon nodded.

"That part seems important to both of you."

Neria stood.

"It is."

The Transfer was prepared at the end of the afternoon.

This time, Neria would walk through.

Without a stretcher.

Without tubes.

Without Order agents around her.

When the passage opened and the forest appeared on the other side, dozens of roots reacted immediately.

All of them began advancing.

Then stopped.

A few meters away from her.

Waiting.

Neria remained still.

Damon noticed the smile.

"She’s trying very hard."

"I know."

Neria crossed.

The roots remained where they were.

She took two more steps.

Only then did she extend her hand.

The forest moved.

Not violently.

The roots came to her, gently wrapping around her feet and wrists, and Eir’s presence emerged throughout the entire space.

"Neria."

"Mother."

Eir’s voice seemed stronger after Mirath.

Or maybe Damon simply interpreted it differently now.

"Three days."

"Three days."

"You stayed."

"Yes."

"You came back."

Neria smiled.

"Also."

Liora appeared running between the trees.

"Did you bring food?"

Neria closed her eyes.

Damon started laughing.

"Is that really the first question?"

Liora stopped.

Looked at him through the passage.

"Did you come?"

"No."

"Then don’t ask."

Damon fell silent.

Jian Yue started laughing behind him.

Neria opened the bag.

"I brought some."

Liora immediately ran over.

Eir spoke:

"She missed you."

"My food?" Neria asked.

"That too."

The answer drew another smile from her.

Neria looked at Damon before Aria closed the passage.

"See you later."

"See you."

The Transfer closed.

Damon remained for a few seconds in front of the empty stone.

Then Ester touched his shoulder.

"Now you."

He turned.

"Me what?"

"Final examination."

Damon narrowed his eyes.

"Final?"

"If it’s as I expect."

That caught his attention.

An hour later, he was sitting in the infirmary while Ester finished evaluating his ribs, shoulder and circulation.

She removed the last instrument.

"Consolidated."

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"No ’practically’?"

"No ’practically.’"

He smiled.

"Shoulder?"

"Recovered."

"Training?"

"Yes."

"Combat?"

"Gradually."

"That wasn’t a complete yes."

"It’s the most you’re getting today."

Damon stood.

After weeks of being reminded with every movement that Caelum had left marks, he felt no pain.

No pressure in his ribs.

No real stiffness in his shoulder.

The three ancestral connections remained present.

Quiet.

None had grown.

No new one had appeared.

His body had simply had time to recover.

Damon liked that.

Ester crossed her arms.

"Don’t make that face."

"What face?"

"The face of someone who was just given permission to do something stupid."

"I’m thinking about training."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"Light."

"Naturally."

She stared at him.

Damon smiled.

"Your face."

Ester pointed toward the door.

"Get out."

He left.

In the corridor, the black tablet vibrated in Aria’s hands.

She was coming toward him.

Damon saw it.

"If that’s an emergency, pretend you didn’t find me."

"It isn’t."

"Problem?"

"Not exactly."

She handed him the tablet.

The message was from Varos.

Short.

The Order’s council had formally approved the interruption of Serik’s succession.

The records would be preserved.

The protocol would have no new host.

But there was one final condition before the decision became irreversible.

The current Serik had asked to speak with Damon.

Alone.

Damon read it twice.

Aria watched him.

"Are you going?"

He put the tablet away for a few seconds before answering.

"Not today."

She raised an eyebrow.

Damon walked past her toward the courtyard.

"Today I’m going to train."

Serik could wait a few hours.

After all, Damon had finally learned that not even conversations with millennia-old protocols needed to interrupt everything the moment they appeared.