The examination is finally done and then he was all alone in his bedroom. The morning light was pale and soft as it streamed through the tall glass windows of his bedroom, and Fainyx sat quietly on the thick carpet with a small ceramic pot placed carefully in front of him.
He pressed his small fingers into the dark and rich soil, creating a tiny hollow in the center, and he took the large and strange seed from the massive apple he got in aetherium and pushed it deep into the dirt.
He wanted to test if the magical plants from his private dimension could actually survive and grow in the normal world outside of his portal, and he patted the soil down with a smooth and deliberate motion while keeping his expression perfectly composed and blank.
He reached for a small cup of water and poured it over the pot, watching the dark earth drink the moisture, and when he finished he wiped his hands on a clean white cloth and looked up at the window.
The sight of the open blue sky made him think back to the red-eyed sparrow that had been sitting perfectly still on the windowsill of his father's office a few days ago when they were discussing his illness.
'That bird...'
He had known the bird was there from the very first second it landed because his heightened senses had immediately felt the strange and unnatural mana wrapped tightly around its tiny body, and he knew it was not just a normal animal looking for a place to rest. He had felt the cold and calculated energy of a spell that was meant for eavesdropping, and he remembered the exact way the mana had pulsed with a foreign intent.
'I was actually preparing a tiny thread of wind magic to bind its wings and pull it inside so we could see who was listening,' he thought with a dry and weary internal sigh as he stared out the window.
'But the exact moment I turned my head and my eyes locked onto it, the person controlling the spell got completely spooked. They must have felt my gaze through the bird's eyes, because they panicked and made it flee before I could even lift a single finger.'
He remembered how the connection had felt frantic and terrified just from his cold and crystalline violet eyes meeting the bird's unnatural red ones, and he realized that whoever had sent the spy was deeply afraid of being caught in the act.
The bird had flown away fast enough to avoid his magic, but it seemed that the damage had already been done...
******
'Damn it'
Few days later, Fainyx found that his quiet and lazy life was being threatened by a new and irritating problem.
Rumors had slowly begun to spread through the thick stone walls of the mansion like water seeping through a cracked foundation. The spy had not heard the exact words "Hollow Constitution Syndrome," but it had seen enough of the tension and the physician's panic to draw a conclusion, and now the servants and the guards were whispering in the hallways that the youngest master of the Duke's household was incredibly frail and suffering from a mysterious sickness that could not be cured.
These whispers eventually reached the ears of Fainyx's elder brothers, who were much older and far sharper than the gossiping servants.
"Liam have you notice the strange and suffocating shift in the atmosphere in this house?"
Liam shooks his head "Whenever I get near to one of our servants they seemed to be avoiding us these days. Seems that their hiding something..."
Then they started to watch their father, the cold and powerful Duke who rarely showed any emotion at all, and they saw something in his face that made their blood run completely cold with a sudden and heavy dread.
The Duke was wearing an expression of deep and agonizing regret, a look of pure and devastating guilt that seemed to carve new lines into his face and age him by ten years in a matter of days. The brothers recognized that exact expression immediately because it was the very same face their father had worn on the day their mother had passed away, and it was the face of a man who was watching something irreplaceable slip through his fingers and knowing he was absolutely powerless to stop it.
They watched him closely from the shadows of the corridors, and they realized with a terrible, sinking feeling that the Duke only ever made that expression when he was looking directly at Fainyx.
The tension in the mansion finally snapped on a quiet afternoon when Fainyx was sitting in the grand family drawing room, sipping a warm cup of milk while the Duke sat in a heavy leather armchair beside him, reading a stack of estate reports with a tired and pale face.
The heavy wooden doors to the drawing room opened abruptly and without warning, and Fainyx's elder brothers walked in together, their faces set with a particular kind of serious and desperate determination that made the air in the room feel instantly tight and difficult to breathe.
"Father," the eldest brother said, his voice echoing slightly against the high ceiling of the large room, and he stopped right in front of the Duke's chair with his fists clenched tightly at his sides.
"We need to know the truth right now."
The Duke slowly lowered the papers to his lap and he looked at his older sons with a gaze that was heavy and utterly exhausted.
"What truth are you speaking of?" he asked, his voice low and carefully guarded.
The second brother stepped forward and he looked down at Fainyx with a gaze that was full of a strange and painful mixture of pity and fear, and then he looked back up at his father's face.
"The rumors that are spreading through the estate, Father. The servants are whispering that Fainyx is suffering from a terrible sickness and that his body is too weak to survive much longer. At first we thought it was just the usual idle gossip of the staff, but then we saw the way you look at him when you think no one is watching."
The eldest brother nodded and his eyes were bright with a fierce and demanding concern that refused to be ignored.
"You look at him exactly the way you looked at Mother before she died.
You carry the same exact guilt and the same exact grief in your eyes, and we are not babies anymore who can be distracted with lies. We are his brothers, and we have a fundamental right to know if our youngest brother is sick..."
The room went completely silent and the Duke froze in his chair, his large hands gripping the armrests so tightly that the leather creaked loudly under the pressure.
He was completely paralyzed by the promise he had made to keep the illness a strict secret to protect Fainyx from the political enemies of their house, but he was also staring at his own flesh and blood who were begging him not to shut them out again the way he had when their mother died.
Fainyx sat on his plush seat and his violet eyes remained perfectly still and unreadable, but inside his mind, a heavy and incredibly uncomfortable feeling was spreading through his chest like a thick fog.
'I am really not used to this at all,' he thought as he looked at the anxious and demanding faces of his brothers and the broken, frozen expression of his father.
'In my past life on Earth, I was just a forgotten orphan who dropped out of school because I never had the support or love of a parent. No one ever looked at me with this kind of desperate worry, and no one ever cared if I was sick or tired or alone. Whenever this family gives me their attention and shows me that they are genuinely terrified for me, it makes me feel like I am standing in shoes that absolutely do not fit me, and I just want to go back to my room and just read some books...'
He wanted nothing more than to just ignore the drama and read a book or go back to his Aetherium to check on his new coffee plants, but he saw the way the Duke was struggling to even breathe under the crushing weight of his secret, and he saw the way his brothers were standing there with their hearts completely exposed and breaking. He realized then that if he did not do something to bridge the gap, this family that he had been born into would simply tear itself apart from the inside out because of the secrets kept for his sake.
Fainyx put his cup of milk down on the small table beside him and he slid off his chair, his small boots hitting the thick carpet without making a single sound. He walked slowly over to the Duke, and his elder brothers watched him with wide and uncertain eyes, completely unsure of what the silent three-year-old was planning to do.
Fainyx reached out with his small and fragile hands and he took firm hold of his father's trembling arm. The Duke looked down at him in shock, his eyes wide and full of a painful hesitation, and he opened his mouth to speak but no words managed to come out of his throat.
Fainyx looked up into his father's eyes and he did not reach for his notebook to write anything down, and he did not even try to force a smile. Instead, he simply looked at the Duke with absolute clarity and gave a single, firm nod of his head.
It was a silent and absolute permission, a quiet acceptance that told his father it was entirely okay to break the rigid rule of secrecy for the sake of the people standing in the room who loved him.
The Duke felt the small hands gripping his arm and he saw the clear certainty in his son's crystalline violet eyes, and the heavy, protective wall that he had built around his heart finally and completely shattered into dust. He let out a ragged breath and pulled Fainyx into a gentle but desperate hug, burying his face in the boy's silver hair, and when he looked back up at his older sons, the tears that he had been fighting back for days finally spilled over his cheeks.
"It is true," the Duke said, his voice cracking with a raw and devastating sorrow that filled every corner of the large drawing room. "Your brother... he is suffering from a terminal illness called Hollow Constitution Syndrome, and the truth is that we do not know how to cure it..."
The elder brothers stood completely frozen, the color draining entirely from their faces as the reality of the words crashed into them like a physical and heavy blow.
The eldest brother covered his mouth with his trembling hand and the second brother simply fell to his knees on the carpet, his eyes locked onto Fainyx with a sudden and overwhelming grief that he could not contain.
Fainyx stood there in his father's tight embrace and he raised his hand to pat the Duke's broad shoulder with a slow and rhythmic motion, looking at his crying brothers with a calm and neutral expression
'...My peaceful life was going to have to wait a little while longer until my father and brothers learned how to stop crying over me...'
He thought to himself with a quiet sigh.