CHAPTER 159: I GREW TOO CARE TOO MUCH

Ariston (Past- Teenager)

The rain had been falling for hours—relentless, silver sheets hammering the roof and pooling outside the wooden house we had moved into about two years ago in muddy puddles. I’d started pacing after the third hour. After the sixth, I was just sitting by the fire, staring into it, jaw clenched so tight it hurt.

Dad was late. Again.

He’d been doing this more often—disappearing for days without a word. He’d taught me how to fend for myself years ago, how to trap and clean a rabbit, how to sleep light, how to listen for footsteps that didn’t belong. But lately, his returns had been different. Slower. Heavier. Like each time he came back, he left more of himself out there.

I was already rehearsing the words I’d throw at him when he finally walked through that door—"You said you’d be back in two days,"

"I’m not a kid anymore, I deserve to know,"

"You don’t just vanish on me like that."

But all of it turned to ash the moment the door creaked open.

!!!

All my anger left me the moment I knew he was home, but my joy didn’t last long. As I turned to look at him, I noticed something.

Dad stood in the frame, soaked through, dripping onto the wooden floor. His coat was clinging to him like wet bark, and his boots were caked in city mud. But it wasn’t just the rain. It was his face.

His skin was pale—too pale—and drawn tight across sharp cheekbones. His hair, usually tied back, hung limp and dark in front of his eyes. And those eyes, those ember-red eyes, they looked dull. Like the fire had gone out.

"Dad—" I was on my feet before I knew it. I crossed the room in three strides. "What happened to you?"

He didn’t answer. Just sort of half-shrugged and stumbled forward.

!!!

I caught him before he hit the floor.

"Dad?" The moment his body hit mine, I felt it.

His body was like a furnace. I touched his face. Burning hot, his skin slick with fever sweat even under the rain. His breath came in shallow gasps.

"Dammit—Dad look at me." I grabbed his face, tilted it toward the light. "You’ve got a fever. A bad one."

His eyes fluttered open just long enough to say, "S’fine... just need—sleep," before he passed out against my shoulder.

I half-dragged, half-carried him to the cot in the corner, my arms straining under his weight. He was a huge man, and he was still stronger than me, even now that I was taller than I’d been last winter. I got him onto the mattress and stripped off his wet coat and boots, then pulled the threadbare blanket over him.

His chest rose and fell too fast.

I stoked the fire higher, filled a bowl with clean water, and grabbed the cloth we used for cleaning gear. It wasn’t meant for this, but it would have to do. I pressed the wet cloth to his forehead and watched him flinch, muttering something incoherent.

"You’ve had fevers before," I said, voice shaking. "But not like this. What did you do this time, huh? Who’d you fight? What did you take?"

No answer.

I set the cloth down, grabbed my own coat, and bolted for the door.

***

The city always smelled worse in the rain—damp stone, wet animals, and too many people crammed into too little space. But the house me and dad lived in was far from the city. We were living alone there for the quiet and peace, so I didn’t slow down. I shoved through the gates, cloak trailing behind me, my boots splashing through puddles in the cobblestone roads.

People looked. They always looked.

The red eyes made them pause even though it should have been difficult to notice in this kind of heavy rain. The wary glances. The little kids pulling behind their mothers’ skirts. The old men squinting like I was something they’d read about in a bad legend.

But I didn’t care anymore.

They didn’t know Rael. They didn’t know how he’d found me starving in a ruined orchard. How he’d taught me everything that made me ’me’. How he’d put a sword in my hand and food in my mouth and a spine in my back.

They didn’t know that he was all I had.

So I ran faster. And when someone muttered "demon-blood" as I passed, I didn’t even blink. I just kept moving.

The apothecary was near the edge of the market, a crooked little shop squeezed between a weaver’s stall and a barrelmaker’s shed. The bell rang as I shoved open the door.

An old man behind the counter looked up sharply. His eyes narrowed at once.

"Red eyes," he said.

"Yeah," I snapped. "They glow in the dark too. Can we skip this part?"

"We don’t serve demons," He said

"I’m human," I said, "I just got a rare disease that turned my eyes red." It was a lie Dad had taught me to use in cases like these, "And it’s not contagious."

He frowned. "What do you want?"

"Fever medicine. Strongest you’ve got. It’s not normal. He’s burning up, barely conscious. I need something that works."

The man opened a drawer and started pulling glass vials, muttering under his breath. "He? Who is he?"

"My father," I said, without thinking. That made him pause. He looked at me again, this time less like I was something to be scraped off his boot. Then he handed over a small pouch filled with herbs and a thin vial of dark blue liquid.

"This’ll bring it down. Might not cure what’s causing it, but it’ll buy you time."

"Thanks." I tossed him three silver coins. I didn’t wait for change.

I wanted to get home as fast I could

Back at the hut, Dad was still burning. I knelt beside him and tilted his head up carefully, holding the vial to his lips.

"Come on. Drink."

He coughed as the liquid went down, but swallowed most of it. I stayed with him after that, changing the cloth on his forehead, keeping the fire alive. I didn’t sleep. I barely blinked. I just sat there with my hand on his arm, listening to his breathing.

I didn’t know what he was doing when he disappeared for days. He never told me. And part of me was afraid to ask.

But now, sitting in the dark with the rain still whispering against the roof and Dad shivering in his sleep, I knew one thing:

Whatever he was doing out there was catching up to him.

"I’m not letting you go on your stupid trips from now on," I warned him as I tended to him. He looked at me, then smirked.

But he didn’t say anything, he looked dazed.

I spent the night bringing down his fever and I don’t know when I feel asleep.

That was perhaps one of my biggest regrets, because I woke up to find something horrible.