Genetic Awakening: My Genes Evolve Infinitely!

Liora listened without interruption, her expression cycling through fear and wonder and fierce, protective pride in equal measure, until finally, as the last of the evening light faded entirely from the sky above them, she reached over and took his hand.

"You’re going to go through with it," she said. "The full crossing. When you’re ready."

"Yes," Rohan said. "I have to. There’s a whole life waiting for me on the other side — parents who don’t know if I’m alive, a world I never chose to leave. I can’t just abandon that, not when I finally have the chance to reclaim it."

"I know." Liora’s grip on his hand tightened, something steady and resolved settling into her voice despite the grief still evident beneath it. "I wouldn’t ask you to stay, even if some selfish part of me wants to. You’ve spent this whole search fighting for exactly this. I won’t be the reason you finally stop."

"Thank you," Rohan said quietly. "For understanding. For everything, since that first day you found me half-frozen and half-convinced I was about to die in the Ashen Marches."

Liora managed a small, watery smile. "You were considerably more pathetic that day than you are now, for what it’s worth."

"I was considerably more everything that day," Rohan agreed, something warm cutting through the grief settled over both of them. "You helped make me into whoever I am now. Whatever happens after I cross, that’s something I’m taking with me, whether the boundary lets me carry anything physical across or not."

He found Pell the following morning, the boy having apparently spent the entire previous evening too shy to push through the crowd of adults surrounding Rohan’s return, hovering now at the edge of the training yard with a mixture of excitement and uncertain hesitation.

"You got taller," Rohan said, crouching to properly greet him. "And considerably braver, if you managed to hold back from tackling me the moment I walked through the gate."

Pell’s careful composure cracked into a wide, delighted grin. "Maerin said I had to let the adults talk first. Said it wasn’t proper to interrupt important reunions with twelve-year-old enthusiasm." He studied Rohan a long moment, taking in the changes. "You look different. Like you actually became what you kept saying you were trying to become."

"I suppose I did," Rohan said, something warm settling in his chest at the boy’s perceptiveness. "You want to see the spear? It’s changed a bit too, since I last showed you."

Pell’s eyes went wide with the particular, uncomplicated enthusiasm only a twelve-year-old could summon, and Rohan spent the better part of an hour demonstrating everything he’d learned since leaving — careful, controlled forms rather than anything genuinely dangerous, but enough to leave the boy thoroughly delighted and considerably more determined than ever to earn his own place among Veyrhold’s trained defenders.

"When you go," Pell said eventually, sobering as the demonstration wound down, "will you actually be able to visit? Or is it like what everyone’s saying — you go, and that’s it, forever?"

Rohan knelt down to meet the boy’s eyes properly, unwilling to soften a truth that deserved honesty even from someone so young. "That’s it, forever, once I finally do it. But I promise you this — everything I taught you, everything Maerin and Jorren still have left to teach you, carry that forward properly. Become the kind of defender this settlement needs. That’s the best way I can think of to stay part of Veyrhold, even after I’m gone."

Pell nodded solemnly, something older than his years settling into his young features. "I will. I promise."

He stayed at Veyrhold for the better part of two weeks, settling into the settlement’s familiar rhythms with an ease that surprised him, given everything the intervening months had changed about who he’d become. He trained with Jorren each morning, the big man’s steady, patient corrections a welcome return to fundamentals after months of desperate, improvised combat. He helped Bryan catalogue the settlement’s latest salvage records, his own hard-won experience with consortium documentation proving considerably more useful than either of them had expected. He sat with Iri during her clinic hours, listening to her steady, practical wisdom about grief and preparation and the particular courage required to walk toward something that would cost as much as it gave.

And each evening, he found his way to Liora, the two of them claiming whatever quiet corner of the settlement offered privacy enough for conversations that ranged from lighthearted memory to the aching, unavoidable weight of everything still waiting at the end of his search.

Dr. Farr, for her part, spent much of those two weeks documenting Veyrhold’s own survival strategies with genuine scientific fascination, cataloguing the settlement’s careful resource management and community structure with the same rigorous attention she’d once applied to boundary contamination theory.

"This is remarkable," she told Rohan one evening, sharing a meal in the common chamber with the settlement’s leadership gathered around, her data slate filled with careful notes despite her evident effort to set work aside during their stay. "A community this size, sustaining itself against odds this severe, with a fraction of the technology and resources most consortium colonies consider baseline necessities. I could write an entire study on Veyrhold’s resource allocation alone, if anyone back at proper academic circles were still inclined to take my studies seriously."

"Maybe they will be, eventually," Maerin said, settling into the conversation with unusual warmth.

"Seems like you’ve already proven considerably more than they gave you credit for."

Corven split his time between helping with the Rustwake’s maintenance and, more unexpectedly, teaching a small group of Veyrhold’s younger residents basic piloting principles, something in the exchange clearly offering him a measure of peace he hadn’t fully expected to find on a backwater ash-world he’d never planned on visiting.

"Never thought I’d end up teaching kids anything," he admitted to Rohan, watching a cluster of eager young faces work through a simplified navigation exercise he’d improvised using scrap components and old flight logs. "Wasn’t exactly planning on this detour serving any purpose beyond ferrying you here and back again."

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