CHAPTER 971: WORDS LEFT BEHIND

Erend’s eyes narrowed, his focus sharpening like a blade. It wasn’t just the words Marcus had repeated but it was the way they were said.

"If you survive this, they’ll come for you." That kind of words sounds like a warning or premonition, cryptic and deliberate. It didn’t come from a fellow patient making idle chatter.

It was a message. Maybe for Marcus or even for Erend himself.

At the time, it may have seemed like nonsense, a morphine-fueled paranoia. But not now when Erend already knew something dark and ancient was moving beneath the surface. The forces even the military and Elves had no name for. That sentence rang too close to the truth to be just a coincidence.

Erend placed the file gently on the table, his gaze never leaving Marcus. He no longer needed the paperwork. He had found what he was looking for.

Beside him, Adrien and Billy exchanged a glance. They recognized the change instantly. Erend had entered the mode only a few had ever seen. He had become quiet and serious.

"That man..." Erend said. "What did he look like?"

Marcus felt an invisible pressure suddenly, like a weight in the room that seemed to build with every breath.

Erend hadn’t moved or raised his voice. But somehow, the temperature rose and Marcus’s spine stiffened instinctively.

"How is he doing this?Just by looking at me... and asking questions?" he thought.

He swallowed and took a deep sip of coffee to steady himself.

"He didn’t look like much, sergeant. Just an old man in his sixties or maybe older. He had white hair and was a bit gaunt. He wore standard issue patient clothes. But he didn’t seem wounded at all. He looked... fine, actually."

Erend absorbed that in silence. Then turned to Adrien and Billy. "We need to check the patient records, captain."

Billy nodded, rising to his feet. "I’m on it."

Without another word, he slipped out of the room.

Erend turned back and spoke again with an unchanged tone. "While you were unconscious, Marcus, did you feel or saw anything? Like dreams or sensations. Anything unnatural?"

Marcus frowned and wiped sweat from his brow he didn’t know had formed. The pressure hadn’t lifted.

"I... I don’t remember much. Nothing stood out."

Erend leaned in slightly. "Try harder."

Marcus saw that there was fire in his eyes now. Not anger but something older. Something vast and ancient. Marcus quickly looked away. He wanted to believe it was just intensity and his imagination but no. He knew what he saw and knew that Erend carried the power of Magic inside him.

"I’ll try," Marcus said, his voice trembling just slightly. He squeezed his eyes shut and dug deep into his brain. Memories surfaced—disjointed images, echoes of pain—but then something solid clicked into place.

"I remembered seeing something," Marcus said, voice hushed now. "It was a weird dream.... It felt absurd but I’ve never forgotten it."

Erend waited, silent and still.

"I was standing in a field of black bones. The ground was red and cracked. The sky... was black, and I mean truly black. No stars or clouds, just void. Ahead of me, there was an enormous tower like it was piercing the sky itself. The tower is made of black stone."

Marcus looked down at his trembling hands. "It felt like a nightmare. But somehow I know it wasn’t."

Erend’s jaw tightened. He had seen the similar place once before in his vision before the battle with Thar’Zul-Vekar. He’d assumed it was a vision of Thar’Zul-Vekar’s domain.

But no. This was something else.

Something worse.

Erend’s expression darkened, and for the first time in years, Adrien saw him as unsettled as this.

"It may be them..." Erend whispered under his breath. "They’re already moving since then."

Marcus heard Erend mutter something under his breath but couldn’t make it out. He blinked and leaned forward slightly. "I’m sorry, sir...?"

Erend shook his head, eyes shifting back to the table. "It’s nothing."

Then he straightened. "Marcus, you won’t be proceeding into the next phase yet."

Marcus’s brows furrowed. "What? But why? That’s not fair. I got one of the highest compatibility scores out of the entire batch. I should be moving forward, not getting benched."

Erend’s voice turned cold and firm. "You can’t."

The weight of that answer hung in the air. Final and unmovable.

Erend locked eyes with him. "You should’ve read the agreement more carefully. We reserve the right to halt your advancement or remove you entirely if we determine it necessary. You agreed to that when you signed on."

Marcus opened his mouth like he wanted to argue but then closed it. He leaned back and let out a long, tired sigh, slumping in his chair.

"Right... I did sign that."

The fight left him all at once.

"You can go now," Erend said.

Marcus didn’t respond. He simply stood, gave them a tired glance, then turned and walked out of the room. The soft click of the door closing behind him left the two of them in silence.

"What do you think?" Adrien asked.

Erend didn’t answer right away. His fingers tapped slowly on the table, eyes distant.

"That vision Marcus had, captain... about the black bones, the sky, the tower. That’s not just a dream. I’ve seen something like it before. It leads to something far more dangerous. We need to be careful."

Adrien nodded slowly. "And the old man?"

"We wait for Billy’s report," Erend said. "Whoever that man was, he wasn’t a patient. He left something behind that was a warning. Either way, Marcus isn’t safe yet and neither are we."

Adrien said nothing for a moment. Then gave a nod of understanding. Even though he was the captain and outranked Erend, when it came to matters like this, the forces beyond logic in the domain of Magic, he knew better than to second-guess the one who had already walked through all of that and come back breathing Magic.

So he simply said, "Alright. I’ll make sure Marcus is kept under light observation."

Erend nodded once. But his mind was already elsewhere.

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