At times Aurelius felt like his situation was hopeless at best. The most common treatment for lower body paralyzation was no treatment at all. Cade told him it was best to just rest and promote natural healing by eating healthy, among other things. As his jaw had mostly healed, Aurelius had bought that theory.

Later he realized that he'd done that because it was easy and it placed things in the hands of some otherworldly force he could always blame if things didn't go his way. It seemed like an excuse to lay in bed all day and wait for the truth to sink in. To hell with that. There was no truth yet. The notion that Aurelius would never walk again was not certain, and as long as it wasn't, it was time to take action. To fight the notion of a presupposed truth was a good enough reason to do anything.

It didn't matter what it was; Aurelius needed to get active. Just doing something was enough even if the action held no purpose at first. He proposed it to Cade, and she didn't object.

An hour later they were outside trying to do Aurelius' 'something'. It was a lot harder than he'd initially thought. He tried bending himself in different positions, stretching, and manually moving his legs, among other things, but to almost less than no avail. Cade helped in any way she could on the side, but Aurelius could sense the pity and sorrow emanating from her. She seemed happy that he was taking the first steps—or trying to—but she was likely afraid that he'd be disappointed and sink even deeper.

It was like she was a mother looking at her child's dream. Aurelius couldn't blame her. For the past month, he'd been much like a child. However, there were benefits to being a child that he'd forgotten.

"Let me down, let me down. Good," Aurelius said as Cade lowered him to sit on a bench on the terrace. "Okay, so now that we've warmed up, we can get to it."

"Warmed up?" Cade asked, deadpan.

Aurelius sensed some amusement behind her expression and kept going, trying to channel his younger self somehow. He hadn't seen her smile in so long. "Yes. I feel warm. Do you?" She shrugged, knitting her brows. "So now I'm going to run."

"Run," Cade repeated after him, not even a question.

"Run." Aurelius nodded and slapped his legs a few times. "The problem is belief. Gabriel used to say..." Aurelius paused. It felt like it had been forever since he'd quoted Gabriel. His old gray notebook had been lying on the bottom of his bag for over a year. "He said that," Aurelius continued, "'If you don't believe in more when you have nothing, that is all you'll ever have.'"

Cade raised her thin brows. "Wow." She swept a lock of hair behind her ear. Somehow the movement was hypnotizing for Aurelius. "Shouldn't you be trying to walk first, though?"

"No. You have to get a jump start. It'll all come naturally." Aurelius braced and pushed himself up with his hands. "Like this!" Then he was in the air. The pleasant wind carried him, and he felt as if his lower body and essence were calling out to him. They wanted him back. The ground seemed to want him more, though, and he slammed down on his face. He forgot what tiles felt like on an unenhanced cheek. "Augh," he reported about the experience.

Cade stood on the side, hands crossed, looking puzzled.

Back on his feet, Cade holding him up, Aurelius got another idea. "Throw me?"

Cade deadpanned again, this time with her mouth open. "You'll just get more injuries."

"No, no, you don't understand. I need more time in the air. Airtime, you know. Then my body will sense the danger, and my legs will have to heal immediately so that I can take the landing."

Cade shrugged and grabbed him by the waist. One can imagine how that ended.

"Any more bright ideas?" Cade asked.

Aurelius had hooked her. "Well, as a matter of fact..."

The terrace had a few, maybe five, or about ten steps going down to the backyard. Aurelius hung from the railing, declaring, "I will now proceed to levitate."

Cade frowned. She was probably thinking it would end worse than the throw. Aurelius wasn't thinking at all. He pushed all thoughts out of his mind except for Cade's smile.

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Aurelius let go. "Hiyaah," he squealed as he fell. It was a little faster than he'd expected. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

He fell onto the hard, grassy ground below with a thump. A groan escaped his mouth, and he kind of got the wind knocked out of himself. Not the worst landing, though.

"You may not..." He gasped a breath. "See it, but there's a minuscule gap between me and this ground." He pointed at the ground, looking up at Cade. Her lips quivered a little before curving up into what seemed like an involuntary smile at his dumb jokes.

Aurelius threw up his arms in victory. "Experiment... successful."

***

Aurelius resorted to meditating. He had done it once as a child before he realized that he learned best by doing. Now, though, there was no other option.

For over a hundred hours he concentrated on that vision and tried to rebuild it. He channeled his passion toward the essence he had in his childhood but reached no results.

At a point, he couldn't help but question whether his vision had just been a delusion or, worse, there was a realm of essence he simply couldn't reach.

Whatever the cause, the result was the same. There was no blue light in the dark like with the vision. Without essence in his mind, there was only darkness.

***

A week after the beginning of his rehabilitation, Aurelius sat still as Aleyah undid the sewing on his face. They had talked for the first time since his paralyzation before they began.

"Cade told me it's about time to remove the sewing on your facial wounds," she'd said. "Just a heads up, this will take a while, and it's going to be uncomfortable."

Aurelius nodded to that. "Thank you for helping."

"Sure," she replied, taking out tweezers, scissors, and some other tools Aurelius didn't recognize. He lay back, and she sat next to him on the bed before getting to work.

She wasn't lying when she said it would take time. Or maybe the sudden stinging pains made it feel like that. Aurelius tried to look at Aleyah since it felt awkward, but he couldn't help but observe how the young woman with silky, slightly curled brown hair had grown more... womanly.

Her face was leaner, and though she wore the same round glasses and her white teeth and tan skin were the same, she'd lost some of her freckles.

Their eyes met, and Aurelius looked away. He hadn't looked for long. Or so he hoped. Aleyah wouldn't tell Cade about it, though, right? What was he thinking? Of course, she would! But it wasn't weird to just look at someone. Well, depending on the way his eyes were. She couldn't think he was looking at her breasts, right? They were right on his eye level, though, so what if—

"Keep your head still," Aleyah said, her voice concentrated.

"Y— yes," Aurelius snapped to attention. "...Sorry."

Aleyah sighed, and Aurelius spent the rest of the time in suspended silence.

Removing the sewing on the wound Gadreel had given him was by far the most painful, but the last over the eyelids on his right eye was the most uncomfortable.

Before starting, Aleyah said, "You have no idea how long I spent on this one."

Aurelius wasn't sure what to say, so he kept silent in his guilt.

By the time the procedure was complete, it was dark out. Aleyah mumbled something as she finished up in the candlelight. He could finally open both his eyes. He blinked, feeling so free, even though the vision on his right side was blurry and had a tint of faint red to it. Aleyah gave him a mirror, and he brought it up to his face.

While he had the sewing on his face, he'd hoped that he'd look normal without them. He didn't. The scars were deep, ached, and would never leave. They were multiple and took attention where everyone looked first. It felt as if his face was underneath those scars. And worst of all was his hideous right eye, shot with streaks and streaks of blood surrounding his blue iris and his small dot-like pupil.

"Will it stay like this?" Aurelius asked, making his voice as strong as possible, but he could hear it was not.

"I don't know," Aleyah stated flatly.

Aurelius wondered where he had gone wrong with Aleyah. The answers came to him in a rush. The way she'd seen him treat people was awful. He'd put his close ones in danger or harmed them for his own goals. What Aleyah had seen of him was that he made Elizabeth feel worse when she was recovering and beat Balgair to a pulp right after before eventually abandoning Cade. He then wondered how Cade had managed to even begin to forgive him for all he'd done.

"Aleyah," Aurelius called out to her as she was leaving. She turned with an indifferent expression, no expectation of anything good to come out of his mouth. "I'm sorry for everything I've done."

There was no change in her. "You don't need to apologize to me. Seeing the shape you're in, I'd say you've already suffered the consequences of your actions. I just don't like you."

"I understand," Aurelius said, casting his gaze down. But right as Aleyah was about to turn away, he picked his head up. "But tell me, what do you know about the Conqueror of the West?"

Aleyah raised her brows, and for the first time, there was some surprise in her eyes. "What?" She stood there stunned for a moment. "I have a book about him somewhere that I won from a traveler." Aurelius' hopes shot up. "Of course, I only discovered afterward that it's in the common tongue of the western continent." She snorted at the end as she shot his hopes down. And then shot Aurelius a questioning look. "What do you intend on doing exactly?"

"Can I get a look at the book?" Aurelius asked.

"It depends," she replied. "Why do you want it?"

"I'm curious. So can I loan it?" Aurelius extended an arm weakly. "Please? Just for a while."

Aleyah crossed her arms. "You wouldn't even understand it, would you?"

"I can figure something out."

She chuckled. "You know, I happened to get my hands on a translation dictionary on the common tongue in question, so if you give me a satisfactory answer, both books are yours."

Aurelius's face twitched painfully, but he bore it for the moment and gave his answer, "I just want to know what kind of man killed my father."