God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.-Chapter 1394: Crow Burdens (1).

The scent reached him before consciousness did.

Herbs. Medicine. The sharp, clean bite of something antiseptic beneath the sweeter undertones of dried flowers and something else he couldn't name. Familiar in the way that a place becomes familiar when you've been desperate enough to need it.

Nero knew where he was before he opened his eyes.

He lay still for a moment, letting awareness seep back into his body the way water seeps into dry ground. Slow. Unhurried. His body ached with the deep, pervasive soreness of someone who had been comprehensively broken and then imperfectly reassembled. Not the sharp, immediate pain of fresh injury, but the duller complaint of healing things that hadn't quite finished the process.

He was alive.

That fact still managed to surprise him sometimes.

His vision, when he finally opened his eyes, came in blurred and uncooperative. The ceiling above him was familiar. The quality of light filtering through the room's small window was familiar. Even the particular way the mattress beneath him compressed under his weight was familiar.

Lyon's infirmary.

He blinked several times, his vision gradually stabilizing as his eyes adjusted. The room resolved itself into sharp detail. The rows of shelves along the walls, crowded with vials and jars containing fluids of every conceivable color. The desk in the far corner, its surface buried under apparatus that served purposes Nero couldn't begin to guess at. Strange tubes of glass connecting vessel to vessel, small flames burning beneath copper containers, the soft sound of liquid being processed through mechanisms that seemed to operate on logic entirely their own.

And standing at that desk, his back to Nero, was Lyon.

The physician moved with his characteristic unhurried precision, adding a drop of something dark to a vial of pale yellow fluid and watching the reaction with the focused attention of a man who found genuinely everything interesting except the people around him. His silver-streaked hair was tied back, his coat immaculate despite the nature of his work.

Nero sat up slowly, his muscles protesting every degree of the movement.

Lyon turned around.

Not startled. Not surprised. Just turning, with the calm certainty of someone who had sensed the shift in the room's atmosphere before it became audible.

"My," he said, his tone carrying that particular blend of amusement and detachment that seemed to be his natural register. "You've finally returned. Was your rest worthwhile?"

Nero looked at him for a long moment without speaking. Outside the window, he could hear the distant sounds of the city. Voices. Movement. Life continuing its business with complete indifference to whether he was part of it or not.

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

"Did I fail?"

Lyon regarded him with an expression that was difficult to read. He set down the vial he'd been holding with deliberate care, then turned to face Nero fully, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed.

"Depends on what you base failure and success on, really." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He paused for a moment, as if genuinely considering whether to continue. Then he sighed, a brief exhalation that carried a note of something almost like reluctance.

"You were battered, wounded, and unconscious. You had to be dragged by the other two out of the forest and back into the city." Another pause. "I believe that was not a very good show to put on. I believe you were well on your way to failure."

Nero closed his eyes.

'Damn it. Did I mess up?'

The thought sat heavily in his chest, pressing down on the places that were still healing. He'd done something extraordinary. Something that should have been impossible. Survived through sheer desperation and the terrifying thing he was becoming, and yet still managed to come up short.

'What do I do now?'

He kept his eyes closed, the thoughts moving fast and tangled through his mind. 'If I've really failed, then the Commander has no use for me. But I'm still indebted to him. What happens then? Will they put me on stable duty? Wash duty? Will I spend the next year scrubbing floors while Arthur Koh hosts feasts and Jacob goes home to his family?'

The thoughts were spiraling, gaining speed and weight—

Lyon cleared his throat.

"Calm yourself, boy. I never said you failed, did I?"

Nero opened his eyes.

There was a grin on Lyon's face. Not the polite, professional expression of a physician pleased with a patient's recovery, but something more genuinely amused. Mischievous, even, in the understated way of a man who rarely let real humor reach his face but occasionally couldn't help it.

"Perhaps maybe you do have a bit of charisma after all." He tilted his head slightly. "Those two idiots vouched for you. According to that boy Arthur, you encountered some trouble in a subterranean temple. I don't have all the details, but apparently, you slew some magnificent Abomination with just a dagger and what I can only describe as extraordinary audacity." A brief pause. "I find that quite intriguing. The examiner seemed to find it intriguing as well."

He spread his hands in a gesture that was almost theatrical, almost entirely ironic.

"Congratulations, Nero."

The tension left Nero's body in a single, long, quiet exhale. He felt it go out of him like air from a punctured bladder, all of it at once, leaving something lighter and considerably more exhausted in its wake. He let himself fall back against the mattress, staring at the ceiling.

There was a grin on his lips that he didn't particularly try to suppress.

Lyon watched this with the expression of a man observing a mildly interesting natural phenomenon. Then he shook his head slowly, something close to a chuckle escaping him.

"Surprisingly, your injuries were not too severe upon closer examination. I also found no traces of corrupted flesh, which I admit I found somewhat remarkable given what you apparently went through." He turned back to his desk, picking up the vial again. "You'll be good after half a day's rest."