Novel Full Chapter 89: Parents
Chapter 89: Parents
Ren called them after the evening training session, sitting on his bed in the quiet of his apartment with the door locked and the lights low.
He hadn’t called immediately after getting his mother’s message. He’d needed a day to figure out what to say — which was another way of saying he’d needed a day to decide how much to lie.
The connection took a few seconds to route through the Jupiter relay. Then the screen lit up and his parents were there, side by side in what looked like a field tent. Canvas walls, portable lighting, a stack of sample containers visible behind Adrian’s shoulder. His father’s face was tanned darker than usual, hair pushed back and slightly longer than Ren remembered. His mother looked the same as always — younger than she had any right to look, her eyes bright and warm, the kind of face that made people pause when she said she had a teenage son.
"Ren!" Elena leaned forward, smile wide and immediate. Then it shifted. "Oh. You look different."
He’d expected that. Three months of cultivation at his pace would change anyone visibly. He’d grown slightly, filled out through the shoulders, and his posture had shifted from the quiet slouch of a loner to something more centered. More present. He just hadn’t thought about how obvious it would be on a screen.
"Growth spurt," he said.
"That’s not a growth spurt," Adrian said. His father’s voice was calm and steady — the same voice that had told him about Bloodline Plant Lords with quiet pride and careful warmth back on Awakening night. "That’s cultivation progress. Good progress, from the look of it."
Ren couldn’t argue with that without lying more than he was comfortable with, so he just nodded.
— • —
"Your message mentioned security changes," Ren said, steering the conversation before his mother could ask exactly how much progress.
Elena’s warmth dimmed slightly. "The Jupiter relay has been flagged for priority Alliance communications for the past week. That usually means something significant has happened or is expected to happen on Edius. We asked around — discreetly — and the word is Rose Country has upgraded its regional alert status."
"Two members of our expedition team have family near Orien," Adrian added. "Both received messages suggesting they consider whether their family members are in secure locations. That kind of language is Alliance-speak for something’s coming and we’re not telling you what."
Ren kept his face neutral. He was getting very good at that.
"There was a security upgrade at school," he said. True. "The Alliance posted additional personnel on campus and upgraded the ward system." Also true. "Our instructor has adjusted our training schedule to include more combat readiness drills." Still true. Every sentence was accurate. None of them told the full story, and the gap between those two things was where the lie lived.
"How much more combat readiness?" Adrian asked. He was an Explorer Guild veteran. He knew the difference between standard drills and the kind of training you ran when you expected contact.
"Survival scenarios. Formation defense. Coordinated threat response as a group." Ren kept his voice even. "Our instructor is Peak Stage 4 and she’s training us seriously. The principal has arranged protection beyond that. I’m in a good position."
His parents exchanged a look. The kind that said they’d had a conversation before this call — about what to listen for, what questions to ask — and Ren’s answers were hitting every trigger on their list.
— • —
"Ren," Elena said carefully. "Is there something specific you’re not telling us?"
’About six things,’ he thought.
"The school is taking precautions based on intelligence about possible external threats," he said. "Not confirmed attacks. Precautionary measures. We have Alliance security on campus — real security, not just school guards. I’m safe."
Elena watched him through the screen with the expression she’d always worn when she knew he was holding something back. She’d had that look since he was a child — or since the original Ren was a child. The thought still caught him sometimes. These weren’t his original parents. They belonged to a body he’d inherited or Remembered, a life he’d stepped into three months ago. But they loved him without condition, and somewhere in the days and weeks since his arrival, that love had become real in both directions. Not borrowed. Not pretended. Real.
He couldn’t put them in danger by bringing them home early. And he couldn’t explain why without revealing things that would make everything worse.
— • —
"We’ve been discussing whether to end the expedition early," Adrian said. "The Jupiter contract has about four months remaining, but we can break it with a penalty clause. We’d lose about thirty percent of the payment. The money isn’t the point."
"Don’t," Ren said. "Not yet."
"Ren—"
"Listen." He leaned forward, making sure they could see his face clearly. "I’m not brushing this off. I hear you. But the situation here is being managed by people who are much stronger than anyone at my level, and I’m in probably the most protected building in Orien right now. If something changes — if it gets real — I will call you. I promise."
Adrian went quiet. His father had never been the type to panic, but he wasn’t the type to ignore warning signs either. Twenty years of Explorer Guild work had taught him the difference between caution and danger, and Ren could see him weighing which category this fell into.
"Your mother and I have been talking about something else, too," Adrian said. His tone shifted — still careful, but with something underneath it that Ren hadn’t heard before. "The expedition has taken us through some deep sections of the Jupiter Realm. Old sections. We’ve found records in the stable zones — expedition logs from previous teams, going back decades."
Ren waited.
"One of them mentions our family by name. The Valis line." Adrian paused. "It’s from a long time ago. A different generation. But the entry is sealed under an Alliance classification we don’t have clearance to open. I’ve never seen anything like that attached to our family before."
Something cold and precise moved through Ren’s chest. Kaia stirred — not warmth this time, but a focused alertness, the way she reacted whenever something connected to the deeper threads.
’Aldric,’ Ren thought. He didn’t say it.
"Probably old administrative stuff," he said. "The Valis family used to be more active in the Guild, right? Generations back?"
"That’s what I assumed," Adrian said. "But sealed records aren’t administrative. They’re operational. Someone classified that entry for a reason." He shook his head slightly. "I’m not trying to worry you with family history puzzles. I just wanted you to know. The Valis name seems to carry weight in places I didn’t expect."
’You have no idea,’ Ren thought.
— • —
The conversation shifted to smaller things after that, and Ren was grateful for it. Elena talked about a rare root species she’d found in the deep sections of the Secret Realm — something with unusual energy properties that she was documenting for the Guild. Adrian described his ongoing argument with Alex about supply logistics, which was apparently a tradition that predated Ren’s existence in this body.
"He wants to ration the preservation fluids," Adrian said, with the weary exasperation of a man who’d had this argument a hundred times. "I keep telling him the samples degrade if you wait too long, and he keeps telling me the budget doesn’t care about sample quality."
"He’s wrong," Elena said flatly.
"He’s always wrong. He just doesn’t know it yet."
Ren almost laughed. Almost. The warmth of it — the easy rhythm of his parents bickering about expedition logistics while sitting in a tent on Jupiter — made the distance between them feel smaller and bigger at the same time. Smaller because they were right there, real and alive, the same people who’d left him with a fridge full of labeled containers and a promise to call every week. Bigger because they had no idea what their son had become in the months since they’d left.
He’d integrated a dead beetle into his soul. He carried two laws where everyone else carried one. He’d fought corrupted beasts, trained with a Peak Stage 4 mentor, run combat drills against a threat that operated across planes, and become the strongest member of a group that included heirs to noble houses and foreign powers.
And he couldn’t tell them any of it.
— • —
"We love you," Elena said at the end, the way she always did. Simple and direct and without any condition attached. "Whatever is happening there, whatever they’re not telling us — you call if you need us. We will come home."
"I know," Ren said. "I love you too."
He meant it. That was the part that made the lying harder. If he’d been indifferent to them, keeping secrets would have been easy. But he cared about them the way you care about people who love you without reservation — and every careful half-truth he’d given them tonight sat in his chest like a weight that wouldn’t settle.
The screen went dark. The apartment was quiet. Through the window, the lights of Orien drifted past in their usual soft glow — hover lanes, holographic ads, the distant hum of a city that didn’t know what was circling its edges.
Ren lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
’Four months,’ he thought. ’Stay on Jupiter for four months. By then this will be over.’
Kaia pulsed in his chest. Warm, but with something underneath — a current that felt almost like a question. Like she was asking whether he believed that.
’I have to,’ he told her silently. ’Because if I don’t, I’ll ask them to come home. And if they come home, they’re in the same building the Crimson Serpent Sect is targeting.’
The warmth steadied. Not agreement. Not disagreement. Just presence. The patient awareness of something that understood what it meant to carry a secret for someone else’s sake.
Outside, the Alliance wards hummed their low, constant note. The guards were at their posts. Somewhere past the Corruption Zones, an organization that spanned worlds was finishing its preparations.
And on Jupiter, two parents who loved their son were deciding whether to trust a promise that their son wasn’t sure he could keep.