Chapter 4: The Facade of Recovery

The night’s moon faded, replaced by the pale, slate-grey light of early dawn.

Below the estate, the town began to stir. The distant, rhythmic creaking of merchant carts and the muffled calls of roosters drifted up through the cold glass.

Inside the Ashborn estate, the heavy silence of mourning was finally breaking. Footsteps echoed in the corridors as servants hurried about, the oppressive gloom of the past week lifting with the news of the Young Master’s awakening.

On the second floor, Arthur was already awake. His mind, trained to process crisis variables, had been running calculations for hours.

I was in a coma for a week, he thought, staring at the canopy. A dedicated assassin inside the house would have smothered me with a pillow on day two. The poison was meant to look like a sudden, natural illness. Which means the killer is either gone, or waiting for confirmation from afar.

The immediate threat of a knife in the dark faded, but a colder, heavier dread took its place. He was in a failing territory, surrounded by crumbling walls, with zero allies.

I need to establish a physical baseline, Arthur decided. If I have to move, I need to know how far these legs will carry me.

Moving in absolute silence, he gripped the polished wooden crutches leaning against the nightstand and hoisted himself up. His muscles screamed in protest, a deep, cellular exhaustion lingering from the poison, but he locked his jaw and forced his way into the small, grey-tiled washroom attached to his chambers.

There was no modern water heater, just a single, tarnished copper pipe connected to a basic spigot. But as Arthur leaned over the basin, something made him freeze.

A faint, luminescent blue aura bled from the metal joints of the pipe. It pulsed rhythmically, a steady, localized frequency. He hovered his hand over it. No heat radiation. No vibration.

Magic, Arthur realized, his mind instantly spinning. It’s an applied enchantment. A localized pressure-pump spell? How does it draw power? What’s the fuel source bypassing standard thermodynamics? He splashed the surprisingly warm water over his face, filing the impossibility away for later.

He had bigger immediate problems than fluid dynamics.

He hobbled back into the main chamber just as a soft, hesitant knock sounded at the oak door.

Arthur instantly dropped his posture, letting his shoulders slump and his breathing turn shallow. He leaned heavily on the crutches, painting a look of pure, terrified exhaustion across his face.

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“Come… come in,” he rasped.

Layla opened the door and gasped, nearly dropping the fresh linens in her arms. “Young Master! You shouldn’t be out of bed! Did I arrive too late to help you?”

Arthur looked at her, his eyes wide and perfectly vulnerable. “I couldn’t sleep, Layla. Every shadow… I just wanted to see the sunlight.”

The maid’s heart melted instantly. “Oh, Young Master,” she cooed, hurrying over to support his weight. “Let me help you dress. The physician is here.”

Moments later, the heavy double doors swung open. Viscount and Viscountess Ashborn hurried inside, trailing an elderly physician who clutched a leather satchel that clinked with glass vials.

They hovered anxiously as the old man pressed a smooth, glowing green stone against Arthur’s chest. Arthur watched intently as the stone’s light flared and dimmed in time with his heartbeat. Hm, a diagnostic artifact. Emitting some kind of penetrating wavelength to scan internal tissue.