Chapter 33 What Aldric Did

Chapter 33 What Aldric Did
Elias's POV

"Dad!" Elias hit the bottom of the steps at a run.

Aldric was standing on the platform.

Both hands flat against the surface. Head down. The pale light pulsing up through his palms and into his arms and his face doing something Elias had never seen on it before, concentrated and deliberate and completely certain.

"Get off the platform," Elias said.

"I heard everything," Aldric replied without looking up. "In the forest. Drell. The woman. The absorption." His jaw tightened. "The burning down."

"Dad—"

"I'm your father," Aldric said. "Three children in the ground behind our house. You standing in a road agreeing to burn yourself down to nothing." He looked up finally and his eyes were red at the edges and completely dry. "I'm your father and I'm standing on this platform and you're going to tell me what it does when someone who isn't a trial runner touches it."

"Nothing," Elias said. "It does nothing. You don't have the bloodline activation."

"Then it won't hurt me to stand here," Aldric replied.

"Get off the platform Dad."

"Tell me there's another way," Aldric said. "Tell me there's a version where you complete the trials and use the weapon and don't burn down and I'll get off."

Elias looked at his father standing on the platform with his hands pressed flat against it and seventeen years of careful distance completely gone and underneath it something raw and specific that had been sitting under all that careful distance the whole time.

"There's no other version," Elias said quietly.

Aldric closed his eyes.

"The dead come back," Elias said. "After the seventh trial. Cara. Brennan. Soli. All of them." He moved toward the platform. "You get all four of us back for the same price."

"I don't want three back at the cost of one," Aldric said. "I want all four."

"That's not one of the options," Elias replied.

"Then I don't accept the options," Aldric said.

"Dad."

"I don't accept them!" His voice cracked on it, the first time Elias had ever heard his father's voice crack on anything, and the sound of it landed in a very specific place. "You're seventeen years old and you've been carrying this for four days and now you're standing there telling me the answer is you burning down to nothing and I don't—" He stopped. Breathed. "I spent seventeen years being careful about how much I let myself believe you were going to survive. And then you survived. And then I started believing. And now—"

"I know," Elias said.

"You don't know," Aldric replied. "You can't know what it costs to start believing again after you've stopped."

Elias stood at the edge of the platform and looked at his father.

"I met them," he said quietly. "In trial four. Cara and Brennan and Soli. They're real in there. Whatever the trial shows is real." He paused. "Cara said you were going to be upset. Brennan asked if I was doing something stupid. Soli told me to try harder."

Aldric made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

"They're waiting," Elias said. "On the other side of seven trials and one absorption they're waiting to come home." He held his father's gaze. "I need you to let me go get them."

The chamber was very quiet.

The platform pulsed slow and steady under Aldric's hands.

"Is there any chance," Aldric said carefully, "that you survive the absorption?"

Lyra answered before Elias could.

"Yes," she said.

Elias looked at her sharply.

"There's a chance," she said. "Small. The woman built the key holder to burn down because she couldn't find a configuration that survived it. But the trial runner taking the absorption instead of the key holder has never been tested." She held Elias's gaze. "She said she couldn't implement it because she didn't have what it required. She has it now. She has you." She paused. "The stage four unlock. The emotional cost conversion. Structural Endurance from trial four. Every ability stacked in specific combination." She looked at the curse mark on his wrist. "The map under the mark shows three convergence points. The third entrance Drell mentioned. She built that entrance for one specific configuration of trial runner." She held his gaze. "You."

"You're saying I might survive," Elias said.

"I'm saying the woman built something she told you she couldn't build," Lyra replied. "And she's been watching every threshold of every trial to see if you'd become the configuration she needed." She paused. "Ask her."

Elias looked at the ceiling of the chamber.

"Is that true?" he asked.

The system pulsed once.

Then the woman's voice came from the foundation layer, quiet and specific, the same way Rael had spoken from the walls after the threshold collapse.

"There is a chance," she said. "Small."

"How small?" Elias asked.

She was quiet for a moment.

"Smaller than I'd like," she said. "Larger than zero."

Aldric stepped off the platform.

He walked to his son and put both hands on his face the way he had when Elias was very small and looked at him directly.

"Larger than zero," he said.

"Larger than zero," Elias confirmed.

Aldric held his face for a moment longer.

Then he stepped back and straightened and the careful distance was gone permanently and what replaced it was something Elias didn't have a word for, not hope exactly, something that had decided hope was worth the cost regardless of outcome.

"Go get your sisters," Aldric said quietly. "And your brother." He paused. "And then come home."

Elias looked at his father for one long moment.

Then he turned to the platform.

"Trial five," he said.

Trial five ready, the system replied. Initiating.

The chamber dissolved.

And the woman spoke one final time from the foundation before the trial took everything.

"The third entrance opens at stage four," she said. "Complete trial five. The map shows you the rest." She paused. "And Elias."

He waited.

"I'm sorry it took this long to find you," she said.

The trial swallowed everything before he could answer.