Cassius’s words strike a chord with me. I believe them, and that is horrific. How many others like us lay in those beds? It was only through luck that we survived. Believing anything else saved us would be too terrible a burden to bear. - Reflections of Lysander of the Lucent.

Exhaustion warred in Lys’s bones. He’d begun to feel the passing of each day, slowly turning into a millstone about his neck, the weight of centuries pressed down upon him. Despite Darian’s mutations taking hold better than any other attempts he’d seen, the boy was failing to adapt to them.

Lys watched as the boy gasped for air like he was suffocating. He’d lost track of how many times he’d brought the boy back from the edge—giving him a lifeline only for it to slip from his grasp as soon as Lys hoisted him up.

Possibilities had begun to appear in Lys’s mind, slipping through gaps in the rules he’d girded himself in.

The boy was dying.

Keeping him alive was akin to torture.

You still have time. It was the ambitions of a younger man that spoke to him. You can try again.

It was true. Despite feeling every bit his age, Lys still had another decade, maybe longer if he was sparing with his use of magic.

He could try again. Find a better student. One that showed more promise. He’s doggedly persistent. After that, he has no talent. The thought angered Lys.

“Was I any different,” he demanded of himself. “The others had all the talent. I had to scrape and sweat and bleed for everything I earned!”

His shout filled the house, covering up Darian’s desperate gaspings for air. Again, Lys looked at the boy in dismay. Darian’s eyes were scrunched shut; the blanket keeping him warm was soaked in sweat.

It’s been weeks. The boy is going to die.

“I could save him.” It was an option that Lys had initially dismissed. One that would likely see both himself and Darian dead. He could feed the boy magic in a way that would slowly train him to absorb it from his surroundings in the same manner as Lys. It could take weeks.

Months, Whispered Lys’s traitorous mind. And even if you succeed, you will likely be a corpse at the end of it, and then the boy will die because he’ll be so weak that he’ll be unable to even feed himself.

It was true. Even if he succeeded without dying, how much time would it cost him?

“But the boy will be alive.”

For how long?

Lys closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, attempting to wake himself up. Despite magic strengthening his body, weeks of little to no sleep had their effects.

Wearily, he opened his eyes as he stood from the chair next to Darian’s bed. Looking down, he stared at Darian’s face and was shocked to see his eyes open. Eyes that had been colored turquoise.

A memory flashed through Lys’s mind. A memory of pain, of lying in a bed as cold, uncaring eyes looked down at him. He stumbled back. Even after all these years, the memory of his recovery still shook him. But it was different this time.

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This time, Lys had been the one staring down into turquoise pools.

“Are my eyes as full of the same madness,” he asked softly. Chills crept over his body. He was making the same choice as Flint.

Flint, the man who had sacrificed hundreds of children in his mad bid to perfect humanity. The faint remembrances of a room full of beds, dozens of children all gasping like Darian as they desperately clung to life.

Is this what it was like to choose?

“It isn’t the same. I care. Flint never did. We were taken, forced to endure his madness.”

Forced… just like Darian had been. The realization struck Lys with the force of a boulder. Not once had he given Darian the option of declining.

He stood, rooted in place.

“Self-righteous, arrogant ass!” He boomed at himself. After all the friends he’d lost, the daughter he’d failed. After the betrayals he endured and the oaths he had sworn, here he stood, contemplating becoming the very thing he had sacrificed so much to destroy.

How could he have even considered letting the boy die? He’d promised his mother that he would see him trained, that he would ensure Darian was capable enough to secure his own future. Anger bubbled in him. Anger at himself.

He channeled his anger into action.

At a thought and with a tiny pulse of magic, sheets of paper appeared in Lys’s hand, summoned from the black ring that never left his finger.

Hurriedly, he began to write. Darian would need instructions on how Lys’s ring and the ring his mother had left for him worked. They were simple but particular. As Lys wrote, more instructions came to mind.

Books Darian would need to read, skills he would need to learn and practice, and finally, the places he could go to continue his education. These instructions would only be needed should Lys die before Darian recovered. Still, it was a necessary safeguard, one Lys hoped wouldn’t need to be employed.

Time passed in a blur as he finished his hasty instructions. A smile crept onto his face as he placed the papers back on the table. If Lys didn’t make it through this, the boy would need to be watched over, at least until he could see to his own needs.

“Gruk and Muk,” he said with satisfaction. The bonded pair of Ogri owed Lys a favor, and he knew exactly how to collect it. Running outside, he indulged in one of the newest branches of magic humanity had discovered.

The spell construct flew together. He released the summoning and felt it reach across the veil to a place he’d never been. A small, indistinct figure appeared in front of him. It looked like it was made of blue vapor. Disturbingly, human eyes glared at him in annoyance.

“I offer fair payment for the delivery of a message.”

“What kind of payment,” hissed the figure.

A fetidrose lily appeared in Lys’s hand; its large red and white striped petals weren’t pretty enough to forgive the pungent, sour order that wafted from its golden center.

“This is fair payment.”

The creature stayed perfectly still, then, “What is the message, and who am I delivering it to?”

“A pair of ogri live in a valley north and east of here. Tell them Bright Eyes needs their help.”

“It will be done spellweaver.” Lys’s eyes couldn’t follow the creature as it blurred; his magical senses, on the other hand, followed it perfectly, and the speed at which it moved was blinding. Letting out a sigh, he returned to the house. The boy needed him.

He stood over Darian, studying the boy. At some point, while Lys had been busy, he had closed his eyes.

Lys shook his head; he was stalling. His decision had been made, and so he began. Slowly, Lys fed a thin trickle into Darian, whose body, like a drowning man, desperately clutched at the tenuous thread.

Lys would have to keep the thread of magic up for as long as it took for Darian to figure out how to connect to the world around them and feed off it.

The effort would be inefficient.

It would cost most, if not all, the time he had left.

It did not matter.

“The boy will live.”