Chapter 1003: The Man Who Taught My Dad
The house felt different when we got back from the mountain. Not spooky different. The opposite. Like someone had gone through every room and quietly turned down the noise you don’t notice until it stops. Dad set me down, and the blue roses on the balcony pretended they weren’t eavesdropping.
"Daddy," I said, because if I didn’t say it right away I knew it would get stuck in my throat, "tell me about him."
He didn’t ask who. He just nodded once and sat. I pulled him to the couch and folded my legs under me and waited the way I wait for a tricky proof to start making sense.
"Magnus Draykar," he said, like the name fizzed on his tongue. "Martial King. Warden of the East. Slayer of the Vampire Monarch. And my master."
The way he said master made my chest feel warm and careful at the same time.
"He grew up ordinary," Dad went on. "Third son of the Draykar family. Solid people, not flashy. Their big advantage was a friendship with the Windwards. When Magnus was a kid, he met Arden Windward—already brilliant, already a force. Magnus admired him. They both loved the sword. One shone like a star. One practiced until his hands ached."
"So a two-variable system with unequal coefficients," I said.
Dad smiled. "Yes. Then the North turned messy. Arden’s grandfather died, leadership shifted, and while Arden went out to get stronger, petty lords realized they suddenly liked the taste of ambition. They struck at everyone under the Windwards’ shadow to see who would bleed. The Draykars bled."
He looked past me for a second, like the air had a memory taped to it.
"Magnus lived," he said. "By accident or cruelty. He watched what was left of home burn down. And then Arden came back and made the people responsible kneel. But that didn’t fix the part inside Magnus that had learned what powerlessness feels like."
My fingers curled on their own. I know the feeling. Not from battles or crowns. From nights where bad dreams have too many teeth.
"He told me once," Dad said, voice low, "that despair became his fire. He didn’t let it eat him. He used it. He left the North. Arden asked him to stay and be safe. Magnus couldn’t. He trained, and he bloomed."
It sounded pretty when Dad said it. Bloomed. Like something chose to be alive.
"He rose fast," Dad said. "Radiant-rank in a decade. Then he did something almost everyone said wasn’t real. He kept climbing. When he thought he was ready, he went to Mount Hua."
I knew this part; my heart still jumped.
"He stepped on their plum blossoms," Dad said, no drama, just the photograph of a moment. "Mo Zenith, their sect leader, brought out everything—his Violet Mist Divine art, his reputation, his calm. Magnus broke the art and the man’s pride. Then he kept going. Nine Radiant-rankers across the world—he fought them all and won. When he went home, Arden was waiting. They fought. Magnus won. Sometimes victory ends a friendship. That was one of those times."
I didn’t say anything for a stretch. People always write about legends like everything they do sits on a gold shelf. Hearing Dad talk, it sounded like the shelf was made of choices that didn’t come with instructions.
"What was he like with you?" I asked.
Dad’s mouth tipped. Not a sad smile. The kind you make for a secret that treats you kindly.
"I met him as a student who needed someone to make his hands worth trusting," he said. "We trained in a hotel gym for three weeks. He told me he liked teaching me. He said I reminded him of him. He pushed. He promised to keep pushing. He put a book in my hand and Nyxthar in my future, and then he went and did the hardest thing anyone can do at the end. He made sure the East would live without him."
The room held still for us. Even the air seemed to wait.
I swallowed. "He would have liked me?" It came out smaller than I wanted.
"He would have loved you," Dad said at once. "You ask good questions. You notice quietly. You don’t stop when the answer is ugly. He liked honest things. You’re one of those."
I pretended I wasn’t going to cry and reached for my slate before my eyes could get shiny. The screen woke with a soft chime, and my feed bloomed into view over the coffee table. I typed Magnus Draykar and the network fetched the world.
A memorial page from the Eastern Council loaded first—gray banner, white text, too many adjectives. "Paragon," "indomitable," "unfaltering." Adults love stacking words when one would do. There was a simple photo that didn’t try to be clever. Magnus in a black coat, hair wind-tangled, a sword that wasn’t showing off, eyes looking just past the camera like they’d seen a horizon and decided to go there.
I found an old interview fragment—grainy, recorded after the Mount Hua match when microphones were still afraid to get in his way.
"Master Draykar, was stepping on the blossoms disrespect?" someone asked with those sharp reporter consonants.
"I don’t step on flowers for fun," Magnus said. "But I won’t pretend ground is sacred when people are dying in the valley. Beauty that protects nothing is a painting."
I liked him a lot in that second.
There was a clip from a training seminar: no commentary, no soundtrack, just the quiet slide of feet and a blade that moved like it didn’t have to explain itself. The caption said: Nyxthar demonstration—single cut, pressure shift. The camera didn’t catch the important thing, because cameras never do. I watched Dad watching the screen, which told me more. His shoulders went a little straighter, like the motion inside the video corrected his stance across time.
Then I tripped over a grainy still from an old Windward event. Arden and Magnus side by side as teenagers, wearing formal nonsense, both trying not to look like they wanted to escape. Arden’s smile spilled warmth. Magnus’s smile looked like he’d borrowed it and was returning it clean.
I opened a longer article that stitched pieces of truth into a neat sweater. The Draykars, the night of fire, the return of a prince, the promise to never be saved again. A pull quote I liked best: We don’t get to choose the season, but we choose how to bloom. I saved it in a folder called People Who Knew What They Were Doing, which already had five names and a picture of a blue rose.
I found a clip from the Vampire War coverage that I almost closed because I don’t like the way broadcasters make suffering look like high drama. The image caught me before my hand could swipe it away. Not the fight. The moment after. Magnus on a cliff. His sword lowered. The camera too far away to pretend intimacy. His shoulders carried tired like a coat, not a wound. It made my throat do that tight thing again.
I put the slate down and leaned into Dad’s side. He didn’t say anything clever. He just put his hand on my hair and let his fingers rest there like a roof.
"Do you miss him?" I asked into his shirt.
"I miss getting to show him the mess I made of his lessons and watching him pretend to be annoyed," he said. "I miss hearing him say ’again’ the exact same way whether I did something right or wrong. I miss how the room got quiet when he breathed right."
"That part you have," I said.
He huffed a laugh. "Working on it."
I thought about despair the way he’d described it. Not as a swamp. As an equation that needed a useful variable on the other side. ’Convert negative to work,’ I wrote in my head. Not for a test. For a day where something sharp arrives and tries to take my father away.
"What did he say when you messed up?" I asked, because people show their truest shape when the person they love does something clumsy.
"He never got loud," Dad said. "He would lift a finger a centimeter and say, ’Not that. This.’ Then he’d make me do it until my hands learned to be honest. When I pretended, he waited me out. When I rushed, he breathed. When I did something right, he didn’t clap. He just looked at me like the next step already existed."
"Did he ever cheat?" I asked, because I wanted to know where the lines are for heroes.
"At the end of a match," Dad said. "If the lesson wanted to stick and pride would get in the way otherwise. A little nudge. A foot where it shouldn’t be. A joke hidden in a cut. Nothing mean."
"Good," I said.
I picked up the slate again. Somewhere in the scroll stack was a lecture he’d given about breath. The transcript opened on a sentence I loved instantly: If your lungs are kind to you, be kind back. I saved that one too.
"Daddy?"
"Mm?"
"Can we go again? To his grave. Not today. Soon. I want to tell him you kept your promises. And I want to bring better flowers. The blue looked right, but I can grow a version that holds its shape in the wind and smells like the first time you open a book."
He squeezed my shoulder. "We’ll go."
I checked the time because somewhere in there I had homework that wasn’t going to do itself, even if the math was scared of me. The wall display chimed with a polite reminder. The calendar pane slid over my feed. I frowned, then grinned so hard it hurt a little.
"What?" Dad asked, picking up the tiny shift in my bones like always.
"Nothing," I said, because that’s what you say when it’s not nothing at all. "Just a reminder."
He raised an eyebrow. His eyebrows are very good at asking questions.
"My birthday," I admitted. "In two weeks. Thirteen." Saying it made the number feel like it jumped up a year and waved. "I didn’t want to push it while you were saving the world. But... I want to do something that isn’t cake."
"What did you have in mind?"
"A project," I said immediately. "A small one. Not explosive. Mostly. A thing that tells a story. About your master. And about you. And about blue roses that look like quiet."
He smiled in that way that makes rooms better at being rooms. "That sounds perfect."
We sat there for a while, not moving, while the city hummed and the flowers turned their faces to the late light and the house remembered us the way houses do. I thought about a man who stepped on blossoms because the valley needed him to and about a boy who looked at that and decided to become the kind of person who could carry such decisions without breaking.
I’m not like them. I don’t need to be. I get to be me. I get to build. I get to make tiny rules that help big hearts breathe. That was enough to make my chest feel too small for what was inside it.
"Two weeks," Dad said softly, as if he’d been reading my calendar by the way I was sitting. "We’ll make something beautiful."
"Deal," I said, and made a note in my slate: Project Blossom. Materials: blue. Story: honest. Math: elegant. Risk: acceptable.
The roses pretended not to approve. The house pretended not to listen. The evening pretended not to be perfect.
Thirteen was on its way.