Chapter 24: Awake

I blinked.

The world around was wrong.

Not the familiar wrong of waking in a tent after dying.

The light was warm. Dust motes drifted in lazy spirals.

I was kneeling.

My knees pressed against a padded rail. My hands were folded in front of me. Small hands. Thin fingers with bitten nails and a scab across one knuckle.

A child’s hands.

I knew this place.

The smell reached me first. Incense, wood polish and a faint mustiness.

The sound came next. A voice somewhere ahead.

A priest stood at the altar. White vestments, gold trim. The crucifix behind him.

Catholic. Like my father’s family. Every Sunday morning without exception, rain or shine, hangover or heartbreak.

I remember this.

Not the way I remembered Kaspar’s life, through journals and secondhand stories and blue-box notifications. I remembered this the way you remember your own name.

I’d lived this.

Beside me, breathing slow and measured, knelt a man.

He was big. Not as tall as the Knight with the massive sword. Yet he had shoulders that could carry a roof beam. Hands that could grip an axe handle and swing for twelve hours without complaint.

His right arm was in a sling.

He knelt anyway.

He always knelt. Every Sunday. No matter what.

I tried to see his face.

My eyes moved up looking at him. The heavy jaw. The crooked nose that had been broken twice. The stubble that he never managed to shave properly no matter how many times Mom left the razor on the counter.

Yet the face blurred. As if the memory itself was protecting it from being fully seen.

I tried harder.

The blur resisted.

His name.

What was his name?

I could feel it. Sitting on the tip of my tongue. Yet, nothing.

The name slipped through my fingers.

Panic spiked in my chest. A child’s panic, the kind that makes your throat close and your eyes burn.

I was crying.

Not the quiet, dignified tears of grief. These were the ugly, shaking sobs of a boy who was terrified and couldn’t hide it.

“Hey.”

His voice was low.

“Hey, buddy. Look at me.”

I looked up.

The face was still blurred. But the eyes weren’t. They were clear.

“I’m scared,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said.

His good hand found the back of my neck. Calloused fingers, warm and steady, resting against my skin.

“Please retire,” I said. “Please. You almost died. You’re hurt. You can’t…”

“I can’t,” he said.

“If it’s about money,” I pressed. The child in me was desperate , “we can figure it out. I can work. I’m strong enough. I can carry things. I can…”

“It’s not about money.”

His hand squeezed the back of my neck gently.

“Then why?” My voice broke on the word.

He was quiet for a moment.

The priest’s continued in the background. Somewhere in the pews behind us, an old woman coughed softly.

“Do you know the story of the Good Samaritan?” he asked.

I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.

“A man was beaten,” my father said. “Left on the road. Bleeding. Dying. A priest walked past. A Levite walked past. Both of them saw. Both of them kept walking.”

His eyes held mine.

“Then a Samaritan came. A stranger. Someone who had every reason to walk past, too. No obligation. No duty. No reward waiting.”

He shifted on the kneeling rail.

“He stopped,” my father said. “He knelt. He carried the man to safety on his own back.”

The hand on my neck didn’t waver.

“The strong protect the weak,” he said. “Those who can, rise to help. That’s not a suggestion, son. That’s not a nice idea. It’s a duty.”

I stared up at him through blurred eyes.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“And if I don’t do it,” he continued, softer now, “if I walk past because it’s easier, because it hurts less, because I’m tired…”

He leaned closer.

“What kind of father would I be? What kind of man would I be teaching you to become?”

I didn’t answer.

The priest’s voice rose. The congregation stirred.

My father’s hand left my neck.

The warmth lingered.

His face blurred further. The eyes dimmed.

The incense faded.

The church faded.

 

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My eyes opened.

Again there was no canvas before me.

My body swayed. The rhythm was uneven, lurching, the cadence of a vehicle moving over bad road.

I tried to move, but couldn’t.

My arms were bound behind my back. Thick rope, wound tight enough that my fingers tingled. My ankles were lashed together. A separate length of cord ran from my wrists to something above me, an iron ring bolted to the frame of whatever I was lying on.

I was on top of a carriage.

Face down.

The ground scrolled beneath me at an alarming pace, visible through the gap between the carriage’s roof boards and the edge of the canvas covering.

Dust. Dry grass. Stones. All of it rushing past in a blur.

I blinked hard, trying to figure out what was happening.

The last thing I remembered was…

The wall. The elves. The blade in my stomach. The massive sword that had swept through the air above me.

Then darkness.

No notification.

I hadn’t died.

I’m alive.

The day hadn’t reset. Whatever had happened after the Knight’s sword separated those two elves, I had survived it.

Which means this was tomorrow.

And I was tied to the roof of a moving carriage.

“Help!” I shouted.

The word came out hoarse. My throat felt like it had been lined with sandpaper.

I tried again. Louder.

“Hey! Someone! I’m awake here!”

A voice drifted up from the driver’s seat below.

“The kid’s up.”

The reins creaked. The carriage began to slow, wheels grinding against packed earth, the horses’ hooves transitioning from gallop to a stop.

Ahead, a second carriage pulled to a halt.