Caeden stood outside the medical ward his uncle was in. He had no idea what he would tell him or what his uncle would say. His life as a smith was over, and he was very close to an invalid unless Caeden could pull off something that bordered on the impossible. That was a lot to tell a man who had only recently awakened from a week-long coma and was dealing with the loss of three of his limbs.

Unable to come up with a reasonable solution, or the right words to say, Caeden decided this whole situation was shit, and he needed to talk to his uncle anyway. It was just going to suck.

Caeden opened the door. The medical ward consisted of a series of beds separated by curtains to his right, with an operating table to the left. Right now, all the curtains were drawn back except for one. Caeden had learned that there were several injuries from the attack at the structure, but they had all recovered in the time since. Anyone who had been directly in the blast was dead. Which, considering how far aft the shot had been, was not many people.

Making his way to the one enclosed bed, Caeden was still completely unsure of what he was going to say to his uncle. He wanted to be able to offer the man who had taught and raised him some kind of hope of recovery, but that was hard to do when Caeden wasn't very hopeful himself.

Drawing back the curtain, Caeden saw his uncle for the first time after the explosion. He was completely shaved, the mass of hair that used to obscure his features entirely removed. Gauze covered the upper portion of the left side of his face starting just above his mouth and including his eye and both of his arms up to just before the shoulder. A blanket covered most of his torso and lower extremities, but Caeden assumed one of his legs was wrapped similarly.

"Caeden! I was hoping you would be showing up!" That piercing gaze, even limited to one eye, hadn't changed in the slightest. His broad smile was much easier to see without all that hair in the way. "Sit, sit. And wipe that look off your face. I'm not gone yet. You're not adding me to your remembrance that easy"

Caeden gripped his remembrance in response, sitting on the stool next to his uncle's bed. "You weren't far off." Caeden felt muted, like there was a filter over the world, muffling everything, dimming the colors, dampening the sounds. Seeing his vibrant, energetic uncle, a true beast of a man, lying in a bed covered in bandages hit him even harder than he was expecting. It didn't feel real. Like this was some strange nightmare.

"Bahh, close isn't dead. Until I'm on that necklace, nothing else counts. There is no close to death. There's dead and not dead." Unc waved a gauze-coated arm dismissively. "Don't go counting me out yet. I'll recover just fine. This is just a temporary problem."

"Unc…" Caeden sighed. "You're not going to get better. There's significant, permanent damage to both your arms and your leg. And…And they won't be healing you. Because of me." There. He had said it.

Unc snorted. "Oh, so you told them not to heal me, did you?"

“W-what? No, of course I-” Caeden stammered.

"Then how about you shut up." Unc stared him down. "Caeden, I knew they weren't going to be healing me the minute I woke up, and they told me I had been out for a week. If they were going to, they would've already. Why they're doing it doesn't matter because it's their fault. Not yours, not mine. How things turned out was unfortunate, but I'm not going to allow a few burns to slow me down. I'll adjust and adapt, just like you did after you crushed your hand. And I won't hear any more crap about this being your fault."

His tone shifted, and his expression softened. "The fault lies with the people who set off that explosion and the CA for refusing to heal me. The only thing you are at fault for is saving my life." Caden stared at his uncle, seeing only sincerity in his eyes. "I remember you blocked most of that blast with your own body. I would be in a remembrance chamber if not for you. If there was enough left of me to even make one."

Caeden had not realized how much he needed to hear that. The tightness in his chest, the oppressive weight he had only just realized was there, disappeared under his uncle's understanding and forgiveness. His eyes watered, and his throat tightened. "Thanks, Unc. I…I wasn't sure what to say to you. This all… A lot happened, and I'm not sure what to do. I wanted to talk to you, but I was worried." He couldn't say any more.

"It's fine, so- Caeden. I would never blame this on you. If you feel like you need to, you can always talk to me no matter what. I promised your folks I would take care of you if anything happened to them, and I stand by that. I think you turned out great, growing up with a smith who knew nothing about how to take care of a kid. Now, enough of this morbid crap. I get some more time to talk with you, and I'm using it. Tell me what's going on. I seem to remember you turning into a giant golden man? What's all that about?"

Caeden laughed a bit wetly. His emotions were all over, but his uncle was alive and okay. He was right; that was all that mattered, at least for now. In the back of his mind, a burning desire formed. For now, though, he wanted to talk with the man that had raised him into the man and ethersmith he was today. "Yeah, it turns out I have a second shroud. Crazy, right?" Caeden raised his hand, turning it purple and gold.

"Ha!" Unc laughed. "That is the gaudiest looking thing I have ever seen! I can't believe you ended up with a shroud-like that."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Caeden wasn't sure if he should feel insulted or not.

"Caeden, you're the most frugal 18-year-old I've ever seen."

"Oh, come on, I'm not that bad." Caeden waved him off.

Unc shook his head. "How much money do you think an ethersmith can make? Actually, how much money do you think I make?"

"I don't know. Why should that matter?" Caeden protested.

"That's exactly my point! Caeden, you could have easily moved to another city and earned well above average wages. Instead, you decided to move to the middle of nowhere to work for farmers."

"I liked the work I was doing! Everyone was friendly. Maybe it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but I was doing fine!"

Unc was shaking his head, "Not a greedy bone in your body. Caeden, I'm not saying you made a bad choice. I'll remind you that I fully supported you when you brought it up with me. All I'm saying is, I think it's funny that the man who would move from a nice city to the countryside to make plow heads and kitchen knives for farmers has a shroud that coats him in violet and gold. Makes you look like the most insecure king in existence."

"Hey, it's not like I picked it out!"

"That's why it's funny!" Unc laughed.

Caeden needed to draw Unc's attention away from the topic. He was starting to feel self-conscious about his new shroud. Luckily, he had something he knew would draw his uncle's attention mainly because it was equally interesting to him.

"Hey, take a look at this." Caeden pulled out Forged Infinity.

"Oh, what have you got there?" Immediately, Unc's attention completely focused on a new piece of ethertech.

Caeden ran through the events that led to the creation of his shrouded weapon. It ended up turning into a much longer discussion about everything that had happened to Caeden last week, which turned into an even longer discussion about the ethertech Caeden had seen in the room outside of the Central Management System, the ethertech man, and the CMS itself.

"But if it was intended to work as a weapon, in the same manner they were using it, the heat management issues would almost certainly be a major flaw. The generally advanced nature of the ethertech involved would make it unlikely for that to be something the creators could overlook." Unc debated, "It's much more likely that what happened to make Forged Infinity was much closer to its original purpose. Plus, who calls a weapons platform 'Central Management System'?"

"But then how were they using it as a weapon? More than that, a weapon of such significant power? That shot had to dwarf anything current ethertech could produce. The Revolution seems to have more advanced ethertech in general, but the CMS was leagues beyond what they were using otherwise. If it wasn't a weapon, what was it?"

Unc shook his head. "I'm guessing, but the name leads me to believe that they might have been tampering with the part of that facility that controlled the power. Whatever they were using to keep the lights on and such. How they managed to convert that to a weapon, well, power is power. The heat management issues contribute to the premise that they were overloading the CMS."

"How much raw energy would that be? I mean-"

"Excuse me." A voice cut Caeden off. An older woman who Caeden assumed was part of the medical staff was standing a few beds away, looking at them. She was smiling but looked a bit impatient.

"We're closing the medical ward shortly. I would appreciate it if you left. You can return tomorrow." She tacked on the last bit like a concession she didn't want to give. Caeden had a feeling the woman wasn't used to her patients having visitors.

"Oh, right. Sorry." He hadn't meant to spend as long in here as he did, but he hadn't seen his uncle in three years, so he had more to talk about than he had thought.

"Go on, then. Bring that friend of yours next time. He sounds like he's good for a laugh." Unc waved Caeden off.

"I'm not sure I want him near an injured person," Caeden half-joked. "He might be full of shit, but his luck is…honestly, if he's not doing it on purpose, that man has the worst luck in the history of the human race. Some of his stories are too insane to be real, but I still don't think he's lying."

"Ahem."

Caeden looked back at the lady, who was looking significantly more impatient. "I'm going, I promise." He raised his hands in surrender, hurrying out of the room.

This had been a good trip.

{}

One week ago, continent of Arcturus.

Travis crouched low, watching the people in fancy clothes talking to his parents. His mother was crying, and his father looked like he wanted to hit something. They know. Somehow. They know. Travis wasn't sure whether or not one of his friends had ratted him out or if someone had seen them, but CA knew he had blown up a shrouded.

And they were looking for him.

"Shit." He whispered under his breath, pulling the hood of the cloak he had stolen tighter over his head, dipping low behind the house he was peeking around. He lived- used to live, at least, in a nicer part of the small city of Growthfeld. The homes were well built, and the roads were paved, not dirt paths. Some were even more than one story. His whole family, going back generations, were healers of some variety. Travis had never been interested.

Now, he was never going to get the chance. If he ever went home again, he would be killed. The Central Authority wasn't going to let a shroud-killer get away. He would be hunted down like a wild animal and killed out of hand. They might do the same to his friends.

He had no idea what to do.

Running away was a given. He wasn't going to fight a shrouded. Not in a million years. After that, though…He had no skills, nothing he could do. He was an underage kid with nothing going for him and the government that ruled over everyone and everything he had ever known, covering every aspect of his world from top to bottom, looking to end his life. He was screwed, without a way out.

Travis realized he had been walking randomly, not even paying attention to where he was going. He noticed because a man wearing a cloak very similar to his own grabbed ahold of him and pulled him to the side, in an alley between two dilapidated buildings in the worst part of town. Travis had no idea how he had ended up here, but he was pretty sure he was about to be robbed. Jokes on him. I'm broke.

That's not what happened, though. Instead, the man threw back his hood, revealing a middle-aged face with a shaggy beard and both dark hair and skin. He had some strange device around his neck, embedded with ether crystals. He was also smiling a broad, slightly crazed smile. "Hello, Travis. I've heard of you. I'm a bit of a fan. I think we should talk."