Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 837: Cracked Reflection : A Grey man’s fear

[Location: Original Space — Raiju]

[Time: A few hours ago]

The breakfast hall sat quiet except for the soft clink of cutlery against porcelain, morning light filtering blue-tinged through crystal paneling that caught Raiju’s particular atmosphere and bent it into something like permanent dawn.

Lucy pushed a piece of fruit around her plate without eating it. Across from her, Vivian sat with her spoon resting untouched in a bowl gone cold, eyes fixed somewhere past the window, past the lightning-veined spires visible along the horizon, somewhere that wasn’t this table at all.

Damien cleared his throat.

"Robert reached out yesterday," he said, too brightly, the kind of bright that came from a man trying to drag a room somewhere it didn’t want to go. "Sterling’s rebuilding faster than anyone expected. Aurigon’s mostly functional again, if you can believe that, after everything One did to the place."

Neither woman answered.

"You remember Robert, don’t you, Lucy? Matthias and Evangeline’s father." He pressed on regardless, spearing a piece of egg he didn’t actually eat. "Back when you were both children, all the original heirs used to get shuffled between worlds, remember that? Grey to Sterling, Sterling to Marricks, round and round, learning everyone’s customs so none of us grew up strangers to each other. Robert and I got shipped off to the Durns compound together one summer, must have been sixty years back now. Neither of us could stand the bloodcraft ceremonies, we used to sneak out and—"

"Dad."

"—and there was this incident with a hunting hound that belonged to the eldest Durns boy, I don’t even remember his name anymore, but the thing chased us halfway across—"

"Dad." Lucy set her fork down, harder than she meant to. "Nobody’s listening to the story."

Damien’s mouth stayed open a second longer than the sentence needed, then closed. He looked at Vivian, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t even glanced up.

"Vivian." Gentler now. "Eat something. Please."

She stood instead, chair scraping back sharp against the floor, and left the table without a word, disappearing down the hall with quick, unsteady steps.

Damien half rose to follow.

"Let her go," Lucy said.

"She’s been like this for weeks, someone needs to—"

"She wasn’t home when they put Lucas in cryo," Lucy said, quieter now, mostly to the table. "She’s been carrying that like a stone since it happened. Let her carry it in private for one morning, Dad. Please."

Damien sank back into his chair slowly.

They sat in silence a moment, the hall’s quiet stretching out long and uncomfortable.

"We need a plan," Damien said eventually. "For Lucas. Something concrete. I’ve had our healers running every combination they know, and Webb Pithon’s people, and it’s still—"

"I have a plan,"

Something in her tone made him look up properly.

"I’m staging a raid," Lucy said, flat, decided. "On the planet Eclipse traced. Arthur’s world. If he’s the one who taught One whatever he used on Lucas, then he’s also the one who can reverse it, and I intend to make him."

Damien’s fork lowered slowly to the table.

"Lucy."

"Don’t."

"You cannot possibly be serious."

"I have never been more serious about anything in my life." Lucy said already standing up.

Damien rose to his feet, slow and deliberate, the movement of a man who’d once carried a crown and still remembered how to make silence answer to him.

"Sit back down, daughter."

"I am not one of your court to be summoned into obedience, Father." Lucy didn’t move. "I stopped being that the day you handed me this throne."

"Then hear me as your father instead, if the title offends you." His voice dropped, controlled, but something underneath it strained against the control. "That man imprisoned me for months. I do not need Eclipse’s reports to know what he is capable of. I lived inside it."

"Then you, more than anyone, should want him dead."

"I want my remaining child alive." Damien’s jaw set. "There is a difference, and I would think you of all people understood it."

"Is that fear I sense, Father?" Lucy said, holding his gaze, steady, unblinking. "Because it certainly sounds like fear, dressed up in a king’s cadence and asked to sit still at the table."

The words landed like a slap. Damien’s chin lifted a fraction, something old and proud rising up beneath the hurt.

"Careful," he said, quiet and dangerous now. "You speak to a man who bled for this family before you ever drew breath."

"Then bleed for it again." She stepped closer, voice climbing, cracking at the very edges of its control. "Bleed for Lucas the way you bled for this crown, instead of sitting behind these walls composing stories about the Sterlings that nobody at this table has the strength left to listen to."

"You dare—"

"I dare because someone in this family has to!" Her hands slammed flat against the table, dishes rattling, the sound sharp enough to echo off the crystal paneling. "I watched you stand in front of the entire court after Arthur’s fall when you got back and speak of duty, of sacrifice, of what a Grey owes to the people beneath them. Where is that man now, Father? Where is he hiding while his son withers in a box?"

Damien’s hand came down on the table to match hers, harder, dishes leaping.

"That man is standing right in front of you, and he is trying to stop you from becoming another name Arthur adds to a very long list!" His voice broke through the composure entirely now, raw. "You think this hesitation is weakness? I have seen what that bloodline does to the people who challenge it carelessly. I wear it, Lucy. Every day of it, still, in ways you have never once had to see."

"We fought him once and nearly had him."

"You fought him with an army of Eclipse children standing at your side, and it still took his own son turning against him to end that fight at all!" Damien’s voice rose to something close to a roar now, the calm king’s cadence entirely abandoned. "We did not win that day. We survived it. There is a difference, and I would have thought, after everything you have lived through, you’d know that difference in your bones by now."

Lucy’s eyes glistened, fury and grief tangled too tight to separate.

"So what," she said, voice shaking, "we wait? We sit at this table, eating food nobody touches, telling stories nobody hears, while Lucas rots in a box because you are too frightened of a ghost to risk what’s left of this family to save what’s actually still breathing in it?"

"That is not fair, and you know it is not fair."

"None of this has ever been fair!" Her voice cracked wide open now, raw at every edge. "Not one single piece of it, not since the day they took you, not since the day they took Lucas from us, and I am done sitting in this hall waiting for fair to arrive and fix what fair has never once fixed in this family’s entire history!"

Damien looked at his daughter, truly looked, and something in his own expression shifted, the anger bleeding slowly into something closer to grief.

He no longer saw the small girl who used to trail behind him through Raiju’s halls, hand wrapped tight around two of his fingers, begging for stories about the Sterlings and the Marricks and every world beyond their own borders. Before him now stood the woman who ruled the people he had once ruled, carrying weight he had spent decades trying to shield her from ever having to carry alone, and watching the last remnants of his own image shatter in her eyes hurt in a way no physical wound Arthur had ever given him could touch.

But he knew better than to let any of that show now. Too much had already been said. Nothing spoken in this state would land the way either of them actually meant it to.

"Lucy—"

A soft chime interrupted, a guard appearing in the archway, posture stiff and formal, clearly having chosen his moment with some care.

"Apologies for the interruption, my lord, my lady." He bowed slightly toward them both. "Orbital bridge security is requesting clearance approval. An EDF vessel is requesting entry."

Lucy’s jaw tightened, the fight still simmering just beneath the surface. "For what purpose."

"They report a high ranking personnel aboard, requesting an audience," the guard said. "Lieutenant Hendricks, my lady."

-----

Lucy stood at the head of the receiving hall, formal robes replacing the breakfast clothes from an hour earlier, Damien beside her, both composed now, whatever had passed between them at the table folded away behind practiced calm.

The doors opened, and Hendricks entered first, flanked by two figures in EDF medical whites, expressions carefully neutral, cases carried between them with the kind of care that suggested valuable cargo.

"General Hendricks." Lucy inclined her head, formal. "You’ll forgive us the short notice. We don’t often receive EDF vessels through the bridge without warning."

"The apology is mine to give, my lady." Hendricks bowed properly, deeper than protocol strictly required. "Supreme General Hiro Shima sends his regards, along with his apologies for the abruptness. Time seemed the more pressing concern."

"Time," Lucy repeated. "For what, exactly."

"Your brother." Hendricks gestured to the two healers behind him. "The General has taken a personal interest in Prince Lucas’s condition since the incident with One. He’s had our medical division reviewing every scrap of data available on the ability used against him, cross referencing it against every recorded drain-type ability in EDF’s archives, going back decades."

"And you found something."

"A theory. Promising enough that the General felt it warranted a direct approach rather than a report filed through channels."

Damien’s chief healer entered at that moment, summoned ahead by Lucy’s earlier order, an older woman with silver-streaked hair and the particular impatience of someone who’d spent forty years being the most capable person in any room she entered.

"Forgive my bluntness," she said, without preamble, eyes narrowing on the two EDF healers. "Raiju’s healing arts predate your entire organization by centuries. My staff and I have poured every waking hour into Prince Lucas’s condition since the moment he entered cryo. What, precisely, do you believe you’ve found that we haven’t already exhausted?"

One of the EDF healers, younger than the Raiju healer although not by much but clearly uncomfortable being addressed so directly, opened his mouth to answer.

Lucy raised a hand before he could.

"Let them present the treatment plan first," she said. "Then you can tear it apart to your heart’s content, Maren. But we hear it in full before we decide it’s worthless."

Maren’s jaw tightened, but she folded her arms and said nothing further.

The senior EDF healer stepped forward, opening the case she carried, revealing a dense array of scanning equipment and a small vial of pale, faintly glowing fluid.

"The ability used against Prince Lucas doesn’t remove energy," she said. "It disables the body’s capacity to generate it at a cellular level. Which means conventional healing, energy transfer, regenerative techniques, all of it fails, because there’s nothing broken to repair. The system itself has been switched off, not damaged."

Maren’s arms stayed crossed, but her eyes had sharpened, listening now despite herself.

"What we’ve developed isn’t a cure," the healer continued. "It’s a bypass. A synthetic catalyst that forces cellular energy production through an alternate pathway, one the original ability never accounted for because it doesn’t officially exist in most recorded physiology. We’ve tested it on three volunteer subjects with similarly disabled systems, all showing full restoration within seventy two hours."

"Volunteer subjects with what condition, precisely," Maren said. "There is no recorded case of this exact ability outside Prince Lucas."

"No. But there are recorded cases of catastrophic cellular shutdown from other causes, near total system failure survivors, and the pathway responds the same regardless of what caused the shutdown in the first place." The healer met Maren’s gaze steadily. "I’m not claiming certainty. I’m claiming a genuine chance where your own records show none."

Silence held the room a moment.

"I want your full data set," Maren said finally, clipped. "Every trial, every subject, every failure alongside every success. I am not authorizing a single dose near that boy’s body until I’ve verified it myself."

"You’ll have it within the hour," Hendricks said smoothly. "The General anticipated exactly this response, and rightly so. Nothing about this bypasses Raiju’s own medical authority. We’re offering a tool, not taking the decision from your hands."

Maren studied him a long moment, then gave a single sharp nod and turned to gather the visiting healers, leading them off toward the medical wing without further ceremony.

Damien exhaled, something in his shoulders finally loosening.

"I should tell Vivian," he said quietly. "She’ll want to hear this from me, not secondhand." He glanced at Lucy, something unresolved still sitting between them from the breakfast table, and for a moment neither of them addressed it. "I won’t be long."

He left, and Lucy turned back to Hendricks, composing herself into the role she’d been playing since the doors first opened.

"Please," she said, gesturing toward a seating area near the hall’s tall windows, Raiju’s landscape stretching out beyond them, lightning tracing faint blue paths along distant peaks. "Sit. You’ve come a long way, General."

"You’re too kind, my lady." Hendricks settled into the offered seat, and his gaze drifted, unhurried, across the hall’s architecture, the crystal paneling, the faint hum of technology woven seamlessly into stone and wood alike. "Remarkable place, this. I’ve read reports on Raiju for years and none of them did it justice."

"Most people expect something colder," Lucy said. "Lightning, storms, they imagine something harsh."

"And instead you’ve built something that hums like a living thing." Hendricks smiled, easy, genuine. "I confess I’m curious how a single ruler manages three worlds at once. That’s no small governance problem, even with modern systems handling the logistics."

"I don’t manage them alone, not really." Lucy allowed herself to relax slightly into the conversation, something almost pleasant in explaining her own world to someone genuinely curious rather than politically probing. "Each territory has its own governing council that reports up through me, and the other original families maintain a presence in each territory as well, something like ambassadors, if you want an old Earth comparison. Little embassies scattered across all three worlds, each family keeping an eye on relations, trade, shared defense. It keeps everyone honest, mostly."

"Mostly."

"Politics is politics, General, wherever you plant it." She allowed a small, wry smile. "But it works better than you’d expect. We’ve had centuries to refine it."

"The Sterlings maintain a presence here too, I take it."

"They do. Matthias’s family has had representation on Raiju since before either of us were born." Something flickered briefly behind her eyes at the name, but she pushed past it smoothly. "It’s a good system, when everyone honors it. And most do."

"I imagine it takes a particular kind of patience," Hendricks said, "governing people who technically owe you nothing but choose to answer to you anyway."

"That’s most of ruling, isn’t it." Lucy studied him a moment, something thoughtful behind her expression. "You’re very easy to talk to, lieutenant. I confess I expected someone more clipped. More military."

"I find people share more when they’re not being interrogated," Hendricks said, smiling warmly. "And besides, this visit isn’t about extracting anything from you, my lady. It’s simply about doing right by your brother, and by extension, your family."

"The General has our gratitude," Lucy said. "Truly. Whatever comes of this treatment, the fact that he thought of us at all, after everything,"

Lieutenant Hendricks rose from his seat, smoothing the front of his uniform.

"I should go check on our healers," he said. "Make sure Maren isn’t giving them too rough a time of it. Older pair, the Reigns, but sharp as anyone half their age. The female healer especially, you must have noticed there’s something almost unsettling about how she is but make no mistakes, she possesses the kind of clinical calm you don’t often see outside a surgical theater. The General trusts their judgment completely on this." He offered a slight bow. "Thank you for the hospitality, my lady. Truly."

"Of course, Lieutenant."

He left the hall, footsteps fading down the corridor toward the medical wing.

"Reign," Lucy said, quiet, to no one.

She didn’t know why, but the name sat wrong the moment it left his mouth. Some instinct she’d learned to trust lately, the same one that had gone quiet and useless the last time it mattered. She’d overlooked a name once before. Rowe. Fed to them as a lead, dressed up clean enough that nobody thought twice about chasing it, and it had turned out to be nothing but a door swung open on purpose. She wasn’t making that mistake twice.

She crossed the hall quickly, robes trailing, and made for the communications wing where a small team of technicians managed Raiju’s outbound relays around the clock.

"I need a line to Eclipse," she said. "Sophie Reign. Priority."

---

[Location: Earth — Eclipse HQ]

[Time: Present]

The screen lit up, and Lucy’s face resolved into view.

"Sophie. Sorry to pull you away."

"It’s fine." Sophie stepped closer to the terminal, Kelvin at her shoulder. "What’s going on."

"An EDF officer showed up here not long ago," Lucy said. "Lieutenant Hendricks. Said the Supreme General sent him personally, that they’d found something that might actually help Lucas." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "He came with two healers. Talked them up the whole time he was here, said they were sharp, that the General trusted their read on this completely."

"Okay," Sophie said slowly.

"Here’s the thing, though." Lucy’s brow furrowed. "He mentioned their family name. Reign. As in, your surname. Sophie Reign."

Sophie’s face went white.

"What the hell," she said, quiet, more to herself than to Lucy.

"Sophie?"

"Describe them," Sophie said, already sharper now, all business. "Both of them. Now."

"Older couple. The man’s got grey through his temples, tall. The woman’s dark haired, very composed, almost unnervingly calm, actually, now that I’m saying it out loud."

Sophie turned to Kelvin, and something passed between them in a single look, no words needed for either of them to land on the same conclusion at once.

"Lucy," Sophie said, voice flat and hard now. "Keep them away from Lucas. Right now."