With the arrival of July, Alistar’s tenth birthday was just around the corner. Zech believed that it was a big deal, but Alistar couldn’t help but remain indifferent. As far as he was concerned, a birthday just meant that he was another year older. In the past, his family would wish him a happy birthday and share a few sad looks, though nothing else had differentiated these occasions from any other day. Once they had finished their tasteless porridge, they would stick around for a short while before being led away to suffer for the rest of the day. There was nothing special about a birthday, and thus no reason to greet it with excitement. At least that had been the case in Crystellum.

Apparently, the people outside of the mines commemorated their birthdays with a celebration among friends and family. Loved ones shared feasts and presented gifts to whomever it was whose birthday was being celebrated. To most people, this was arguably the most important day of the year. But none of that mattered to Alistar. Even if he wanted to experience a traditional birthday, he had so much on his mind that something as trifling as the passing of another year held no significance in his heart.

In truth, he was still very depressed over the death of his mother. Those ignorant days that he spent with his parents and his uncle seemed so distant now, as if they were the remnants of some indistinct, melancholic dream. He had been struggling to come to terms with his father’s death up until the day that he was released from Crystellum, the eve of his uncle Raidon’s murder. Now that his mother had passed, reality sometimes felt as if it were a waking dream. On days that he enjoyed himself or was deeply distracted by his studies, all it took was a slight remembrance of his recent traumas to steal away his enthusiasm, and also his happiness.

He’d met many people since his arrival in Distan, yet felt that nobody truly understood his pain, even in the remotest sense. The life that he’d left behind compared to the one that he’d adopted was completely different, in all possible aspects. Suddenly, there was much more to do than to simply wander through unlit tunnels for hours on end, and there was an incredible variety of foods and drinks to enjoy. He had learned how to do laundry, and how to make simple meals. He’d gained a great amount of knowledge, and in doing so had become increasingly adept at reading and writing. Most importantly, he trained his body on a daily basis, and was in the midst of learning how to defend himself. Despite all of these distractions, he missed the darkness of the tunnels more than he could describe, along with the sounds of Kaila’s shuffling feet and the distant clinking of metal on mineral.

Whether it was on the pile of rags that had served as his family’s sleeping space in the Resident Cavern, or upon the soft, satiny sheets of the beautiful bed within his basement room, Alistar struggled with the same sense of sadness throughout many nights of the week. Night terrors were a common occurrence, and his dreams were constantly plagued by a decrepit likeliness of his father, a frail skeleton of the man that he had loved so deeply. The shadowy visage had sunken skin and a deathly, pallid complexion, and was always depicted in his dying moments.

Rodei would cough harshly, blinded by fever, as he struggled to spit out his final words to Alistar. Unlike the events that had actually taken place, it was only ever the two of them within the vast confines of the Resident Cavern. Every time, his father was unable to form his deathly whispers into a coherent sentence, always dying and dissipating in Alistar’s arms like tobacco smoke on a windy day. At this point, the dream would dissolve and then reset to the beginning, in an endless loop of the same soul-rending scene.

After his uncle Raidon had been murdered, the big man’s bloody visage had also begun to appear in his dreams, a solemn phantom that simply stared at Rodei’s final moments with the listless expression of a lifeless spirit. He always appeared in the state that Alistar had last seen him in, a red smile grinning wickedly along his neckline where Bertrand had imparted the dark, gaping wound that had stolen away his life. And now, in recent weeks, Alistar’s mother had joined the deathly gathering. Unlike Rodei or Raidon, she didn’t materialize as a tragic victim of starvation, sickness, or suffering. She manifested as a featureless silhouette, a plain, faceless body, though there was never any doubt as to her identity. With his family reunited, the dream would play out in its usual sequence. Only now, his uncle watched on in silence, while his mother held him close in a cold, hard embrace. No matter how much he tried to move on with his life, he was faced with a constant reminder of his family’s demise. The cruelest aspect of these torturous dreams was that they were the only times when he could reunite with his loved ones.

“Can you just take a break already?”

Alistar was practicing his sword swings in the central courtyard of Caedmon’s estate, while Anice watched on from a nearby bench with a glum expression on her rosy face. Unwilling to break focus, he ignored her and continued on as if she wasn’t there. Closing his eyes, he imagined Tramon’s sharp strikes and began defending against these imaginary attacks with his defensive technique. After ten minutes of silence, he opened his eyes to see that Anice was still sitting nearby, playing with her scarlet hair in an absentminded bid to pass the time.

I hope that she doesn’t think I’m going to play with her when I’m done.

Anice had been pestering him a lot lately, though he didn’t have it in him to shoo her off. He knew that she only wanted to spend time with him, but his time was precious, and ever fleeting.

“You can sit there all you want, but I can’t play with you, Anne. I need to read up for Mrs. Dawn’s lessons tomorrow.”

“Yeah right. Don’t act like you didn’t finish your work the day she assigned it.”

She was right, but how did— “You went through my drawers!”

“So what?”

“I told you not to go in my room, Anne.”

“You told me to leave, too, and here I am.”

Rolling his eyes, he gently placed his wooden sword down upon the cobblestones, and then walked over to take a seat beside his cousin.

“Where’s Uncle Caedmon?”

“How should I know?” she huffed. “It’s not like he ever tells me where he goes.”

A momentary silence set in, which emphasized the watery trickles of the nearby fountain, as well as the songs of unseen birds.

“Why don’t you ever want to play, Alie? Papa’s always busy because he’s got a lot of work to do, but you don’t have to do anything.”

“I play with you all the time.”

“A few times a week is all the time? That’s barely any of the time.”

“Of course I want to play, it’s just that…”

His best friend and her grandfather were still trapped in Crystellum, and he was their only hope of ever escaping. The guards had made it clear that Caedmon’s word meant nothing to them, and that the foreign noble held no sway in their affairs. After the plot to kill Alistar and his uncle had unfolded, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Talon was forced to fill two crates with magic crystals on a daily basis, just like his father. Even now, as he struggled to come up with a way to explain things to Anice in a manner that she would understand and accept, Grandpa Talon was likely slaving away doing severe labour. Thinking of those that he had left behind, the callouses on Alistar’s hands began to ache with remembrance. No matter how much he practiced with his wooden sword, his hands never bled like they used to.

Sitting there on the weathered bench, his mind wandered from thoughts of Kaila to some words that his mother had spoken on the day of his departure.

Although you will be parting soon, not all goodbyes are forever.

How could he live a leisurely life like the other children when his conscience bore the brunt of such a heavy burden? Of all his loved ones, only he and his uncle had been released from that horrible place, and only he had survived the days that followed. In this great and vast world that Alistar had reluctantly wandered into, he was the only person that cared about the fates of Kaila’s wonderful smile, and that of her reliable, soft-spoken grandfather. He, with all of his faults and flaws, was the only person that they could rely on.

“Alie?” Anice inched closer and cupped his left hand with both of hers. “Why are you crying?”

He calmed himself and wiped away the unsuspecting tears.