Chapter 604: Rowan
"It’s been a few days since he’s been out. What do we do?"
Talan, the tank, stood at the edge of Moon’s medical bed with his massive arms crossed and his brow furrowed. He had spent most of the past three days rotating through the medical wing on his off-shifts, checking in on Moon even when he had no reason to be there.
Rowan sighed.
He was seated in a chair beside the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. His eyes rested on Moon’s peaceful face. For the first time in his life, Rowan didn’t have a next step to offer.
Moon’s condition had improved since Kellan had found him at the gate.
The purple discoloration around his mouth had faded and his skin had regained its normal color.
His body was no longer in immediate danger of collapse. The healers had reported that his vital signs were stabilizing on their own without external intervention.
But he hadn’t woken up.
His heartbeat was still faint. His mana channels, when the base healer had examined them again, still showed damage across multiple pathways. Unfortunately, she could do nothing about that, and could only leave Moon’s body to deal with it.
The healer had told them, gently that Moon would likely wake up eventually. Whether it was days, weeks or months, the timeline was uncertain.
None of them wanted to hear that.
Rowan straightened up in his chair.
"I’ll head back to Earth. See if I can find help. I don’t want to move him just yet, just in-case his condition worsens."
Talan’s brow lifted slightly before nodding his head.
Rowan had been the boss’s second in command since the liberation. He had led while Moon had been away. If anyone was going to make the call to leave the floating island for help, it would be him.
But Talan also knew what it cost Rowan to say it.
Rowan hadn’t been back to Earth since they defeated Layla. Although he wasn’t sure what it was, he knew it was something deep in Rowan’s heart. To see him do this for the boss, Talan’s respect to Rowan grew.
Since the moment his free will had returned to him, Rowan had been fighting a private war inside his own chest.
He hadn’t spoken about it to anyone. He had carried it in his heart, quietly, through rebuilding the base, hunting the surrounding zones, and hanging out with them.
Rowan had married young.
They had spent their childhood together in one of the countless orphanages hidden within New Avalon’s outer districts, two Awakeners who had never experienced real wealth.
They had chosen each other during their early years. Once they both awakened, they moved out of the orphanage, renting an apartment together.
They married the a few months after that. They were always in love.
They had promised each other, in the fervor of young Evolvers just beginning their ascent, that they would survive together and grow stronger together, and that no matter what the world threw at them, they would build a life worth living.
They had done it too, for a while.
When they had both evolved and reached the Second Sanctuary, everything had changed. Bills that had been a constant source of stress became trivial.
Their quality of life had climbed.
Evolvers received monthly payments from the Association even when they weren’t actively hunting, and the combined income had let them move into a bigger house in a better district.
Olivia had started planting a small garden at the back of the property. Rowan had built her a shelf in the kitchen for the tea jars she had been collecting since her teenage years.
They had been happy.
The happiness had lasted less than a month.
Just like any other day, he had told Olivia he would be back within a day or two, the floating island was a tough nut to crack.
He had never come back.
Layla, the Witch of Charm, had chosen him as her next subject. After being lead by Joseph to her, everything crumbled.
He didn’t remember most of what had happened after that. The witch’s smile. The moment of realizing that he was no longer in control of his own body. Then years. Just years. Blurred together into a single long stretch of being a puppet in a war he didn’t understand.
Moon had freed him.
And whilst nearly everybody had already returned to earth to visit family, or just for a breath of fresh air, he hadn’t gone home.
He couldn’t.
Every time he tried to picture stepping back through the gate to Earth, his mind froze.
’Would she still be there?’
The house. The garden. The tea jars on the shelf. All of it, or something else entirely?
Is she alive?
He hoped she was, she had been strong, a capable Evolver in her own right. She had known her way around danger. But the Second Sanctuary was more than just a dangerous place.
His disappearance would have hit her hard and grief made people careless.
Is she dead?
He didn’t know. He couldn’t know without going home to check. And every day he delayed going home was another day the answer stayed unknown, and unknown was still, somehow, easier than confirmed loss.
’If she’s alive. Has she moved on?’
That was one of the worst possibilities.
Rationally, he wanted her to have moved on. He wanted her to have found happiness in the years he had been gone. He wanted her life to have continued in some meaningful way. The version of him that had promised to grow stronger with her would have been furious at the version of him that hoped she had stayed alone.
But underneath the rational hopes, there was a smaller, more selfish part of him that wanted her to still be waiting.
He hated that part of himself.
He also couldn’t kill it, no matter how hard he tried to do so.