"He is going to be alright."
The doctor pulled off his gloves. He looked tired. "It's a surprise he's even breathing, to be honest. Much more than that. He's a medical miracle, Miss Margaret."
Margaret let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Her shoulders dropped. Her hands stopped shaking.
She looked at Margie. The girl was standing by her side. Pale. Shaking. Eyes wide like a rabbit caught in headlights.
Margaret looked at the doctor. He understood. He nodded and left the room. Closed the door behind him.
"Margie." Her mother's voice was quiet. Too quiet. "I want to ask you something. And I want your honest truth. Do you... or do you not... have a hand in his accident?"
Margie swallowed. Her throat moved. "No." Her voice cracked. "As much as I hate him, I don't have it in me to kill him."
She wasn't looking at her mother's eyes. She was looking at the floor. The wall. Anywhere but Margaret's face.
"But your father has it in him."
Margie jerked. Her whole body flinched.
"I knew it." Margaret's voice was cold now. Ice cold.
Margie opened her mouth. Probably to cover for her father. Probably to say something like he didn't mean it or it was just supposed to be a scare.
She never got the chance.
The slap came fast. Hard. Margie's head snapped to the side. Her cheek turned red. Tears spilled out before she could stop them.
"He is your brother." Margaret's voice broke. Just a little. "For fucks sake, Margie. You hate him. Fine. You don't have to like him. But must you join your father in a plan to kill him? He is the only family you have. If I die tomorrow, he's the only one who will have your back. Again and again. He understands that. He told me. He wants a relationship with you. But I don't get why you don't."
She stopped. Took a breath. Her eyes were wet now.
"Have I failed as a mother? I trained you. I raised you. Was it the holidays you spent with your father? That vile human corrupted your mind. Made you blind to your own wrongdoings."
Margie was crying now. Real crying. Snot and tears and shaking. "I swear, Mom. I didn't really know he was going to do this. I thought he was just going to take him somewhere far. This time. I swear. I didn't know about the truck. I didn't know."
Margaret stared at her daughter. Her face was hard. But her eyes were tired. So tired.
"Since when do you think your father meant well for Lucian? Hell, I believe he would have tried to kill him as a kid. But Lucian survived. He got lost. Or was taken. I don't even know anymore. And now that I found him, your father is still hell-bent on killing my boy."
She picked up her purse. Straightened her jacket.
"You tell your father something for me. Tell him I will hunt him. Tell him to be ready. Because I'm coming for him."
She walked out. The door clicked shut.
Margie stood there. Alone. Crying. Her cheek still stung.
---
Meanwhile.
Lucian wasn't in the hospital room anymore. He wasn't anywhere. At least not anywhere that made sense.
When he thought he was going to die, right before everything went black, he heard it. A soft ding. Inside his head. Not outside. Inside.
Then nothing.
Now he was here. Wherever here was. A dark space. No walls. No floor. Just him and... something else.
A screen. Floating in front of his face.
A system. Like the ones in those web novels he used to read on his old phone back at the farm.
This should have been a happy moment. A miracle. Every story he ever read, the system was a gift. A cheat. A way out.
But his system was broken.
Error messages stacked on top of each other. Red text. Yellow text. Lines and lines of code he couldn't understand. It looked like someone was hacking it. From the inside. Or maybe from the outside.
ERROR: Core function unstable
ERROR: Skill tree corrupted
ERROR: Level data missing
WARNING: System breach detected
WARNING: Unknown intrusion
The text kept scrolling. Faster and faster. Like a computer dying.
If my system is being hacked from the very beginning, Lucian thought, then how useless is it going to be?
He watched the errors pile up. Hundreds of them. Thousands. The screen flickered. Went black. Came back.
Then something changed.
A new line appeared. Different color. Gold.
REACTING TO HOST BLOODLINE...
The errors stopped. All of them. Just froze mid-scroll.
BLOODLINE DETECTED. UNKNOWN ORIGIN.
RACE: HALF HUMAN / ???
CLASSIFICATION: ERROR - DATA CORRUPTED
ANALYZING...
The screen went blank again. Lucian waited. He couldn't do anything else. He wasn't even sure if he had a body right now.
ANALYSIS COMPLETE.
BLOODLINE: UNKNOWN (CLASSIFIED - ACCESS DENIED)
RACE: HALF HUMAN / HALF [REDACTED]
PASSIVE ABILITY UNLOCKED: [REDACTED]
SKILLS REACTING...
ABILITIES REACTING...
CLASS REACTING...
The screen started filling up again. But not with errors this time. With numbers.
LEVEL: 1 → 99
CLASS: NONE → [REDACTED] (LEVEL 99)
SKILL 1: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
SKILL 2: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
SKILL 3: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
It kept going. Line after line. Dozens of skills. Dozens of abilities. All of them shooting up to max level. Ninety nine. Every single one.
ABILITY 1: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
ABILITY 2: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
PASSIVE 1: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
PASSIVE 2: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
PASSIVE 3: [REDACTED] → LEVEL 99
STATS RECALCULATING...
STRENGTH: 99
AGILITY: 99
ENDURANCE: 99
INTELLIGENCE: 99
WISDOM: 99
MAGIC: 99
LUCK: 99
ALL STATS MAXIMUM.
SYSTEM STABILIZED.
WELCOME, HOST.
LEVEL 99 ACHIEVED.
CLASS LEVEL 99 ACHIEVED.
ALL SKILLS LEVEL 99.
ALL ABILITIES LEVEL 99.
WARNING: BLOODLINE RESTRICTIONS ACTIVE. SOME DATA REMAINS [REDACTED].
CONTINUE?
Lucian stared at the screen. His head was spinning. Half human? Half what? What was the other half? And why was everything redacted? Hidden from him.
He was twenty one years old. He went missing when he was three. Eighteen years in the countryside. On a farm. With people who weren't his real family. And now this.
A system that broke the moment it activated. Then fixed itself because of his bloodline. A bloodline that even the system couldn't fully read.
He looked at the screen again.
CONTINUE?
He didn't have a mouth here. But he thought the word as loud as he could.
Yes.
The screen flickered one last time. Then everything went white.