The silence that followed was rather stagnant, but it didn't last as Alaric reached for Julian's shoulders.
"But you didn't have this before. I watched you wake up, I…," Alaric's voice was slightly broken with confused despair, his hands tightening on Julian's shoulders as if trying to physically hold him together.
And then he recalled what had happened the previous day. How Julian had been sitting upright, his eyes devoid of life. He refused to speak, but could this be…?
"Did it happen recently? Is that… is that why you were like that yesterday? You looked like you had the life sucked out of you, and you couldn't tell me anything. Was it because of this… this illness?"
Illness, He said, it was an illness. Wouldn't it have been nice if it were just an illness? At least then, he could find a cure, or even come up with one.
But it was more than that. It was a madness that had been inflicted on him as a punishment for reincarnation, he believed.
