Chapter 5
Author: Kashish
last update2026-05-24 17:36:24

"Are you sure about this?"

Gianna's fingers moved through Dante's hair, slow and careful, the way she used to do when he was small and running fevers in the middle of the night. The hospital lobby was quiet around them, soft sunlight coming through the tall windows, and her thumb traced the faint scar on the side of his neck where the doctors had placed the emergency line three days ago.

"Mamma, I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're standing because you're stubborn, not because you're ready." She smoothed the collar of the shirt Lucia had brought from home and her eyes stayed on the scar. "We could stay another day. The doctors said observation was recommended."

"They said it was optional."

"Optional means they think you might still need it but they're too polite to force you."

Dante smiled. It was the kind of smile mothers recognize instantly, a mask stretched over exhaustion, held in place by willpower and nothing else. "I'm a priest, remember? Healing class. I can take care of myself."

The lie sat between them like a glass ornament on the edge of a table. Gentle. Necessary. One wrong breath from shattering. He had no healing skills. His two abilities were both designed to do one thing, and that thing was the opposite of healing. But Gianna needed the lie the way she needed to smooth his hair and touch his scar, and he gave it to her because he had nothing better to offer.

"You look tired," she whispered.

"I look alive. That's an upgrade from three days ago."

"Don't joke about that."

"Mamma, if I don't joke about it, I'll think about it, and if I think about it, I'll start crying, and then you'll start crying, and we'll flood this lobby and they'll have to evacuate the whole building."

"You're impossible."

"I learned from the best."

Lucia appeared from the hallway carrying two paper cups of coffee and a bag of pastries she'd grabbed from the hospital cafeteria. She took one look at Gianna's face and handed her a coffee without a word.

"Mamma, if you don't let him go now, he's going to fly away on his own. You know how he gets."

Dante caught her eye over Gianna's shoulder and winked. Lucia understood. She always did. He was drowning in a moment of tenderness he couldn't quite handle, and she was throwing him a rope disguised as a joke.

"Where are you going?" Gianna took the coffee but didn't drink it.

"Awakened Association. I need to register."

"Today? You couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

"They said within 72 hours of awakening. I'm already past that."

Gianna opened her mouth to argue, but something in his face stopped her. She pressed her lips together, took a breath, and pulled him into a hug that lasted exactly long enough to say everything neither of them could put into words. Lucia squeezed his arm once, firm and quick. No speeches. No tears. The goodbye was brief and warm and carried more weight in its silence than any sentence could have held.

They climbed into a taxi parked outside the lobby. Gianna rolled down the window.

"Call me when you're done."

"I will."

"The second you're done, Dante. Not an hour later. Not when you feel like it. The second."

"Yes, Mamma."

The taxi pulled away. He watched it until it turned the corner and disappeared, and then he stood alone on the sidewalk with the sun on his face and the strange, hollow feeling of being alive when everything said he shouldn't be.

He flagged down a second taxi and climbed in.

"Where to?" The driver was a thick man with a beard that needed trimming and a voice that filled the small car like smoke.

"Saint Elias Boulevard. The Awakened Association Center."

The driver's eyes found him in the rearview mirror and stayed there a beat too long. "You one of them? An Awakened?"

"Just awakened. Going to register."

"No kidding." The driver whistled through his teeth and pulled into traffic. "Awakening these days, that's like winning the golden ticket, kid. You know how many people would kill for what you got? My nephew took the ceremony three times. Three times. Nothing. Stone didn't even flicker. Broke his heart."

"I know the feeling."

"But you got through, right? That's what matters. Everything changes now. Better pay, better housing, better everything. The whole world opens up for you people."

Dante watched the city slide past the window. Glass towers and old stone buildings bleeding into each other, billboards advertising guild sponsorships next to posters warning about rift zones, people walking fast with their heads down the way people walk in cities where the sky has already broken open once. "It's more like a landmine in a warzone," he said quietly. "You just don't know when it'll blow up."

The driver laughed like he thought it was a joke. Dante let him

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