When Jacob's eyes finally opened, the first thing he registered was the quiet familiarity of his surroundings, the stillness of a room he had expected to find himself in all along. He lay in his bed, dressed in soft and unblemished clothes, his body free of wounds as though nothing at all had happened to him, though the memory of everything remained carved deep into his mind.

Slowly he turned his head, scanning the room for Arthur, but the boy was nowhere to be found, nor was anyone else, though Jacob knew well enough that he was not alone.

"How many days have I been asleep?" he asked into the air, his voice hoarse, the words carrying more weariness than strength. As expected, a voice rose at once from the darkness at his feet.

"Barely a single day," came Belemir's calm reply. "Your body has been fully treated. Young Master Arthur is being briefed on an urgent matter by Sir Alex, Lady Jessica remains confined to her room as she continues to recover, and the Grand Scholar left behind a message for you."

Jacob had begun to push himself upright, but at those words he froze, his breath catching. His hands trembled faintly against the sheets as he forced himself to ask, "Jessica… she is recovering from what exactly?"

There was the briefest pause before the answer came, subdued yet without hesitation. "Mary's death weighed heavily upon her. It struck deeper than even she anticipated."

Jacob lowered his head, the strength leaving his arms as he sank back onto the bed. He sat there in silence, not attempting to form thoughts nor to argue with himself, simply letting the words sit heavy in his chest while the guilt he carried clawed at him from within.

After some time, his voice returned, quieter now. "Why would Arthur be receiving a briefing? And what of Grand Scholar Lazarus, what message did he leave?"

Belemir shifted, his form rising from Jacob's shadow and taking a few measured steps back before speaking again.

"Firstly, you must know that the Holy Kingdom has made an official proclamation. They have accepted Whisper as a recognized church and have pledged their full support to it. This declaration has been announced openly across every continent."

Jacob inhaled sharply, his whole body tightening with the weight of what those words meant. The thought alone was enough to sink his stomach, for if the most devout of kingdoms, one long upheld by the gods themselves had chosen to shelter the very cult that had plagued them, then the meaning was clear: their enemies would not only endure, they would thrive.

Belemir's tone hardened, confirming what Jacob had already begun to fear. "Though there has been no open declaration of war, movements within the Holy Kingdom leave little doubt as to their intent. The king has already begun gathering allies, and preparations are underway to expand our military strength. There is also no small matter of Whisper itself, which now boasts fifteen cardinals, most of whom are strongly suspected to have reached rank zero."

The words pressed down upon Jacob like an iron weight. War, war with the Holy Kingdom, one of the three great powers of the world, war with a nation whose people were believed to be guided and shielded by the gods themselves, war with a force vast enough to crush kingdoms in its stride. The reality was almost too large to comprehend, and yet he knew it was coming, inevitable and merciless.

"The king attempted to hold the Holy Kingdom accountable for your kidnapping," Belemir began, his tone measured though his expression betrayed a brief flicker of anger, "but their response was to accuse you of attempting to trespass upon the secrets of the gods. They declared that you, along with the Eight Pillars and a handful of others, are the greatest sinners this kingdom harbors."

Jacob felt no surprise at the words. Someone within Whisper had already learned of what he and his brother had tried to accomplish, and the pursuit of immortality itself was damning enough.

It was, after all, the one quality mortals were never meant to possess, the final barrier that separated gods from men, and one could imagine how many believers would lose their faith if the foundation of entire religions, that only gods could live forever, were to crumble in the wake of a single mortal's success.

He had failed, yes, but failure was not the danger. The danger lay in the book of Akashic's research he still possessed, the pages filled with attempts to unearth immortality's secret. Whether they had confirmed its presence in his hands or not, Jacob would wager they already suspected, and he would wager as well that Samuel had been the one to tip the balance.

For now, the book remained hidden, untouched and unopened, pushed deep into the corner of his shelf where it would never see the light of day again.

Jacob exhaled softly. "And what about Grand Scholar Lazarus' message?"

"The Grand Scholar instructed me to tell you that you are to prepare for rigorous training beginning next week," Belemir replied without hesitation. "Furthermore, since both you and Young Master Arthur have expressed interest in the sword, he has arranged for someone to teach you the discipline properly."

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'The Grand Scholar is remarkably generous,' Jacob thought, finally pushing himself to his feet. He nodded in acknowledgement. "Thank you, Belemir."

With that, Belemir dipped his head before melting back into the darkness at Jacob's feet, leaving him to his own thoughts.

Jacob made his way out of the room and through the quiet corridors of the mansion, his steps unhurried but certain, until he stopped before a particular wooden door. A note had been pinned across its surface in a neat hand: do not disturb.

For several long moments Jacob simply stood there, staring at the words, the silence of the hall pressing in around him. Behind that door was Jessica's room. His hand hovered faintly at his side, torn between the urge to open it and the heaviness in his chest that kept him rooted to the spot. He wanted to see her, to offer some kind of comfort, but the guilt weighed him down so completely that he doubted he even had the right.

"I could have saved Mary, Belemir," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the wood grain of the door. "If I had been stronger she would still be here. In a way she died because of me. Do I have the right to speak to her now?"

Belemir offered no reply, but Jacob could almost hear the unspoken answer in that silence, 'this is something you must decide for yourself.'

He lingered a moment longer before finally turning away, deciding he could not face her, not now, not like this. He had no words that could ease her grief, no explanations that would lessen the burden, only his own gnawing remorse. Yet as he took the first step to leave, a faint sound reached him through the door. Jessica's voice.

Jacob froze, every instinct urging him to keep moving, to leave her alone, and yet the quiet tremor of her voice pierced him deeper than any blade. 'I'll only make it worse,' he told himself, though each syllable that slipped through the wood struck him like an arrow.

With every step he forced himself to take down the hall, the weight of self-loathing grew heavier, for in his heart he knew it all too clearly, he had been the one to put her in this state.

At last Jacob forced himself to stop pacing the corridor, and before doubt could tighten its grip on him he moved quickly, almost desperately, rushing to the door and wrenching it open as though speed itself could stop him from turning away again.

He stepped inside, shut the door firmly behind him, and braced himself for what he expected to see: Jessica collapsed on her bed in tears, or perhaps locked in the bathroom where the sound of her weeping would be muffled by the walls, the sort of things people did when grief hollowed them out, things he himself had done, and remembered with no small measure of shame.

But the sight that met him was nothing like the picture he had prepared himself for. Jessica stood in the middle of the room, her hands clenched around the hilt of a greatsword far larger than the weapon she usually carried, a blade so unwieldy that it seemed more suited to breaking stone than cutting flesh, and she was driving it again and again through the air with every ounce of strength she had left.

Her palms were raw and bleeding, her skin slick with sweat, her shoulders trembling from exertion, and the look in her eyes made it clear she had been at it for hours, perhaps since the moment she had been left alone.

Jacob froze, uncertain of how to respond. It was obvious she was not coping well, not in the slightest, but this was not the quiet mourning he had imagined, it was something harsher, a kind of self-destruction carried out under the guise of training.

The question pressed down on him at once: what could he possibly say to her? How could he even begin? And beneath that lay the heavier thought he had been carrying for hours, that perhaps he ought to confess that Mary's death could have been prevented, that in some way it was his fault.

Before he could untangle his hesitation, Jessica lowered the blade, letting its heavy tip rest against the floorboards, and turned to face him. For a moment they simply stared at one another, an awkward silence settling between them, until finally she spoke, her voice flat and cold.

"Didn't you see the sign?"

Jacob's thoughts scrambled, 'she's angry, she's hurting, she wants me to leave', but despite her words he stepped forward slightly, forcing a smile that he hoped looked reassuring though he could already feel it faltering beneath her unyielding expression.

"Don't you think you're pushing yourself too hard?" he asked gently. "You should rest, even if just for a while. We could… talk instead."

The words sounded weak even as he spoke them, and when her expression did not soften in the slightest, his smile wavered, leaving him caught between his desire to comfort her and the suffocating guilt that whispered he had no right to be there at all.

"I'm not training too hard," Jessica said at once, her voice firm though the exhaustion in her body betrayed her, "I'm not training enough, not nearly enough. If I had been strong enough, Mary would still be alive. I was there with her when it happened, and it's my fault."

Jacob didn't need to pause or weigh his words; his own guilt surged forward before he could stop it, and he raised his voice without meaning to. "You can't blame yourself for that, Jessica, what could you possibly have done?"

"Only you think that," she answered darkly, her eyes fixed on him in a way that made his chest tighten, "you know what the others told me? They told me to stop dwelling on it, to move forward, to focus on growing stronger. They said that if I had been stronger, if I had pushed myself further, then I could have saved her. And you know how old they are, how much they've seen, if they say it, then it must be true."

Jacob felt his throat tighten. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and the words pressed insistently against his lips, but the weight of them stopped him. It would take so little, just a few simple words, the truth that he carried like a stone in his chest:

'don't blame yourself, blame me instead; don't listen to them, because Mary died because of me, she died because I wasn't strong enough to protect either of you.' But even as the thought took shape, he couldn't force it out.

Their relationship had only just begun to mend after years of distance, and though he might have told himself in the past that honesty was more important than anything else, now he found that the idea of returning to that old silence, of standing apart from her once again, was unbearable.

So instead he swallowed it all, and with his heart heavy and his fists tightening at his sides, he turned slowly toward the door. "Don't listen to them," he said quietly, his back to her now. "And don't push yourself to the point of breaking. Mary wouldn't want you to do that."

He didn't wait for her reply. He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and closed it behind him, every step away from her room deepening the ache in his chest, as though he had failed her a second time.

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