Ryan turned on his heel and walked out of the cubicle, his heavy footsteps fading down the crowded corridor.
Seconds later, the privacy curtain was yanked back again. A dark-skinned woman standing just over five feet tall rushed into the space. Her face was flushed, her full, fleshy frame trembling as tears spilled over her cheeks. The moment her eyes locked onto Axel sitting upright, a choked cry escaped her throat.
She threw her arms around him, pulling his head tight against her chest. "Oh God, Axel... you're alive. You're actually alive."
"Mom," Axel wheezed, his voice muffled against her shoulder. "I'm okay."
She pulled back just enough to frame his face with both hands, her thumbs wiping away her own tears as her eyes frantically scanned his neck, arms, and torso for wounds. "They've been broadcasting the names for the past few days," she sobbed, her voice trembling violently. "Every hour, a new list of dead awakeners they managed to identify from the corpses... I sat by that speaker listening to name after name, Axel. I thought—I was so terrified your name was going to be next."
The nurse stepped back into the cubicle holding a clipboard, snapping open a plastic seal. She ran a fast, final series of diagnostic checks over Axel's vitals, unhooking the IV lead from his arm and dabbing the puncture site with alcohol.
"Vitals are stable; core aether output is resting," the nurse said, handing over a stamped slip of paper. "You're discharged. Clear the bed for the next arrival."
Twenty minutes later, Axel stepped through the front door of their apartment, the heavy metal door thudding shut behind them. The quiet of the room felt almost alien after the constant groans and static of the hospital block.
Axel leaned against the entry frame, watching his mother immediately head toward the small kitchen counter to pour a glass of water.
"Mom," Axel asked, his eyebrows pulling together as he looked around the sunlit room. "Why aren't you at work today? It's mid-shift."
She set the glass down on the counter with a soft clink, her hands still shaking slightly as she turned back to face him.
"They suspended all sector operations," she said softly, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist. "Management put everyone on mandatory leave until the breach situation at the perimeter is completely resolved."
"How are we supposed to manage?" Axel asked, his throat tight as he looked around the meager living room. "Your pay is already barely enough to cover the rations and sector tax. If they cut your shifts..."
His mother forced a faint, reassuring smile, stepping over to squeeze his arm gently. "Don't you worry about that right now, Axel. We'll manage. We always do. What matters is that you came back alive."
Once she retreated to her bedroom to rest, Axel finally closed the door to his own small room, more of a passage than a room, really. The quiet swallowed him whole. Leaning his back against the wood, he exhaled a long, heavy breath and focused his intent inward.
Instantly, the translucent window of text flared back into existence, floating silently in the air before his eyes.
[Rune Smithing]
[Aether: 10,000]
[Core: White]
Axel stared at the sharp, glowing numbers. Ten thousand. He chewed the inside of his cheek, staring blankly at the digits. Without any reference point or context from other awakeners, he had no way of knowing if ten thousand aether points was a pathetic drop in the bucket or a massive reservoir.
As he continued down to the last line of text at the bottom of the interface:
[Runes, the language of realities.] [You have immunity to the effects of runes.]
Axel stared at the floating line of script. "Runes, the language of realities". The phrase made no sense to him. It sounded abstract, as if the text was describing something far beyond the physical world he knew.
If the word Smithing hadn't been tacked directly onto the end of the ability's title, anchoring it to something tangible like forging and crafting, he felt like he would have gone insane.
He leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the second line. You have immunity to the effects of runes. What did that actually translate to in the field? He drew a few tentative conclusions. Did it mean if a weapon or an enemy attack carried a runic imprint, the blast or status effect would slide right off him? Did it mean he could handle raw, volatile runic materials during forging without burning his skin or destroying his own core? Without gear in his hands to test it on, he could only guess.
From down the hall, the faint clatter of pots and the aroma of simple boiling broth drifted into the room as his mother prepared dinner.
It's been a few hours already.
Axel tightened his eyes, sinking his consciousness deep into his chest, and forcibly activated the core of his ability.
Instantly, the quiet room vanished behind a blinding, overwhelming flood of light. Millions of jagged, glowing glyphs exploded into his vision at once, cascading across his mind in a violent, chaotic torrent. Some runes took clear, crisp shape before him, their structural lines readable and sharp, but countless others flashed past with staggering, terrifying complexity—forces of reality his mind was nowhere near prepared to perceive.
A violent wave of nausea slammed into his head. Axel's skin shivered violently, a convulsive tremor running through every limb as intense pressure built behind his eyes.
"Ah—!"
His skull felt like it was splitting open from the inside. Blood burst from his nose, spilling hot over his lip, while thin lines of red seeped from his ears and the corners of his eyes. The light shattered into darkness, and his body collapsed limp onto the floor.
When Axel's eyes fluttered open again, the room was dim, illuminated only by the faint glow of a bedside lamp. He could hear raw, frantic weeping right beside his ear. His vision was blurred, but he could make out his mother clutching his hand, her face wet with tears.
His throat felt like dry sand. "W-water..." he muttered, the word barely escaping his cracked lips.
She gasped, quickly pressing a glass against his mouth and tipping it with trembling hands. Axel swallowed a few cool gulps, the effort draining the last sliver of his consciousness. His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, and he dropped straight back into darkness.
Over the next few days, time blurred into a silent haze. From time to time, his eyes would crack open to the touch of a damp cloth on his forehead or the rim of a spoon pressing against his teeth. His mother stayed by his side around the clock, feeding him thin broth and wiping the feverish sweat from his skin, her soft crying a constant hum in the quiet room. Axel could feel her panic, but his body remained completely paralyzed by exhaustion, far too weak to lift a hand or utter a single word to reassure her before slipping back under.