Chapter 28: Thee Night

The conditioning had become a living weight.

Harlan sat on the edge of the examination table in Elandor’s laboratory, bare to the waist, while the old mage moved around him with cold precision. Thin runic lines glowed faintly across his chest and arms where the preparatory channels had been forced open over the past days. Each session left him weaker than the last, as if something essential were being scraped out and replaced with a hollow readiness.

His muscles ached with a deep, unfamiliar fatigue. Not the clean exhaustion of training, but a bone-level weariness that sleep did not fully erase. His appetite had dwindled. His hands sometimes trembled when he thought no one was looking. Yet every reading Elandor took seemed to please the old man more than the one before.

"The pathways are responding," Elandor said, making another notation in his journal. "Better than expected. The bloodline is asserting itself under pressure. Physical resilience remains high. We are ready for the final stage."

Harlan lifted his head. "Tonight?"

"Tonight." Elandor did not smile, but there was a rare satisfaction in his voice. "The core will be seeded after full suppression of your natural resistance. Once it takes hold, the difficult work begins—teaching it to remain stable. But the first step is the most dangerous. You understand this."

"I do."

"Good." Elandor set the journal aside. "Go. Eat if you can. Rest for a few hours. Return at full dark. I will have everything prepared."

Harlan slid off the table and pulled his shirt back on. The fabric felt rough against the sensitive lines of the runes. He climbed the stairs on legs that felt less steady than they should have and stepped out into the late afternoon mist.

Antoine was waiting.

He stood a short distance from the laboratory hut, arms folded, expression unreadable. Harlan stopped. For a moment neither man spoke.

"You heard," Harlan said finally.

"Enough." Antoine’s voice was quiet, but there was iron beneath it. "You’re going through with the final stage tonight."

Harlan straightened. "Yes."

Antoine studied him for a long moment. The mist curled between them. "You look like hell. The process is already eating at you, and it hasn’t even properly begun."

"I’m fine."

"You’re not." Antoine stepped closer. "I understand why you’re doing this. I do. The need to be more than what you were born as. The weight of watching everyone else carry power while you carried only a spear. But understanding it doesn’t make it right. And it doesn’t make it safe."

Harlan felt a familiar heat rise in his chest—the old, bitter frustration that had followed him since childhood. "You don’t know what it’s like. You never will. I don’t exactly know what you are, but I know you’re far from ordinary. So don’t ever pretend or think you know how I feel. I have spent my entire life as the absence in a family of mages. This is the first real chance I have ever been given to change that. I will not walk away from it."

"I’m not asking you to walk away from strength," Antoine said. "I’m asking you not to let your uncle carve it into you with a method that already nearly killed one man and almost took the rest of us with him. If you insist on doing this, I’ll be forced to stop you myself."

Harlan’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword. The movement was slow, deliberate. "I have made my decision. You will not stop me."

Antoine’s eyes flicked down to the weapon, then back up. Something shifted in his expression, surprise, then a colder understanding.

"You’re drawing on me?" Antoine asked quietly.

"If you try to interfere," Harlan answered, voice steady, "I will cut you down before you can finish the thought. I respect you, Antoine. I trust you with my life in a fight. But I will not let you take this from me."

The silence that followed was sharp. Antoine stared at him as if seeing a different man standing in Harlan’s place. After a long moment he exhaled and stepped back. He would not fight his friend, and he was definitely done trying to change his mind as well.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," Antoine said. The words carried no heat, only a tired finality. "Because once it’s done, there may be no undoing it."

He turned and walked away into the mist without looking back.

Harlan remained where he was until Antoine’s figure disappeared among the platforms. Only then did he release the breath he had been holding. His hand was still on the sword. He forced it to let go.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of restless motion. He tried to eat and managed only a few mouthfuls. He sat in his small assigned shelter and stared at the opposite wall, feeling the preparatory runes pulse faintly beneath his skin in time with his heartbeat. Doubt flickered once, and he crushed it immediately.

This was the path, and he had chosen it.

When full dark settled over the marsh, Harlan rose and walked back to the laboratory.

Elandor was already waiting. The central table had been cleared and reinforced. New arrays of crystals and reagent vials stood ready. Suppression wards glowed softly along the floor and ceiling. Cael still occupied a secondary table in the far corner, unconscious and heavily bound by stabilizing magic.

"Remove your shirt and lie down," Elandor said.

Harlan did as instructed. The wood of the table was cold against his back. Leather restraints were buckled around his wrists, ankles, and chest, not out of distrust, but to keep him from injuring himself when the process began. He tested them once, then let his muscles go slack.

Elandor moved around the table with methodical calm, placing crystals at key points along Harlan’s body, adjusting the flow of energy through the prepared channels. His face was unreadable, but his hands were steady.

"Last opportunity to withdraw," the old mage said quietly.

Harlan stared up at the dark ceiling of the laboratory. "Do it."

Elandor placed two fingers against Harlan’s forehead. Cool magic sank into his skull like water poured through cracks. A heavy, irresistible drowsiness followed at once.

Harlan’s vision narrowed.

The last thing he felt was the distant pressure of something vast and foreign beginning to press against the edges of his mind.

Then the laboratory, the marsh, and every choice that had brought him to this table fell away into darkness.