A day had passed by and I was feeling much better all things considered. Though, I was still too weak to move around much, and I could hardly even change clothes by myself. Though what Mara would help me change into was nice enough It was almost worth how awkward it made me feel.

'New clothes is a big step forward, but I haven't actually gotten stronger… Realistically I haven't made any meaningful progress, regardless of recognition based on practical results… Although that might be the most reasonable way to continue forward and try to improve some things. Next, I suppose I'd want…' I paused, staring blankly at the door. 'I don't even know… Steroids would be nice…'

Letting out a heavy sigh I suddenly heard a loud crash followed by yelling. It was too muffled to make out everything but I got the gist of it. My father used magic… 'Magic is banned in Skorveyati, at least among the noble class… For whatever reason our ethnicity is bad at it, so wasting your time with it is considered the same as giving up on your duties. Still, he learned it before he became a noble… And it's not like anyone's going to find out, everyone in the castle is more loyal to him than the country. Was it really so wrong for him to do that? Considering my condition… Didn't he save me? Or am I misunderstanding something…' I let out a long groan, rubbing my head as The yelling stopped. 'Well, yesterday was relaxing at least… It's funny how even someone else getting yelled at makes me tense… I can't even remember Mara ever raising her voice that much.

She quickly opened the door to my room, her urgency and aggression seeming to vanish as she slowed to a halt inside the frame. "Can you stand?" she asked, her tone still clearly a little agitated.

I slowly pushed off the massive fur blanket and crawled to the edge of the bed's large frame, hanging my feet off the edge. 'Why is it still so hard to move… It's been forever… Before I was just tired… But it's like I'm too weak…'

Sliding off, I landed on my feet, a little nervous, but still expecting everything to be fine. My bones ached as my legs folded underneath me, too weak to support my weight. Suddenly the fresh sting of pain filled my body again as I bruised my knees on the hardwood floor. "What?" I muttered… 'Maybe my legs are just asleep from laying in bed for so long…'

Mara growled with a clear hint of anger returning as she looked back at my father, who was already long gone.

I tried to get up on my own but it wasn't just my legs, my arms and even my grip were weak as well. 'I don't remember being nearly this skinny… I can see the tendons in my arms… As I grabbed the frame of the bed to try and use it as a crutch, I fell down again. My gown had bunched up as I continued to try and move, exposing my legs and making my eyes go wide as I saw them. 'They look like toothpicks…'

I couldn't explain it, but all the muscle I had spent years building was gone. I pushed up my sleeves and my arms were the same. It looked like I had been starved for weeks. 'It's only been a couple of days right? No… It wasn't like even yesterday…'

"Stay there," Mara said with an annoyed tone as she walked over to my side, offering a hand. "I'll help you."

"What?" She towered over me with a grimace. 'How am I going to train like this?... That's why she came for me right? But if I can't even stand…'

She knelt down, grabbing my arm and wrapping it across her back, but after a small pause, she turned around and lifted me up onto her back. "Have a nice nap?"

"I-I thought I did…" My shaky voice cracked as I tried to talk. It wasn't that I was exhausted. I had energy, a ton of it in fact. But I still couldn't even stand.

"Yes well… You're alive… That's all that maters." She paused. "You surprised me… In a good way for once. I thought for sure you wouldn't make it this time…"

"The reaping…" I muttered.

"You know already..."

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"I… well… But… I mean."

Her shoulders rolled slightly as she raised a hand to my head, checking my temperature with her knuckles before continuing. "Who knows what all compounded inside your body… Acid, poison… The reaping… Knowing you I bet you had a cold too."

She opened the door and began carefully walking down the stairs, trying not to shake me around too much, as if I were a thin glass pane.

"The reaping is a state brought about when your level of energy is so low, that you don't even have enough energy to create more energy… Manna… It's called. Though we don't use it for magic, all living things have it, and need it to survive. Like air, or water… Or I guess more like blood."

'Ok…' "I thought I was fine though?"

"For now you just need to worry about eating and recovering." after a long pause she let out a heavy sigh. "But that answer isn't very satisfying to you either is it…"

'I mean it wasn't… But I wasn't expecting her to care…'

"You didn't have enough manna left over to make more manna, so instead your body rapidly broke itself down in a desperate attempt to jump start yourself… It's… Something like that… Though to be honest… I don't know much about manna and all that stuff to begin with…"

I slowly rested my head on her shoulder. 'Go figure I guess… Building back is always easy compared to building up, but it still sucks… Hard to complain when I'm alive though I guess… But… "Hey Mara…"

"Hm?"

"What happens… if… After a few days off… I still can't walk…"

We entered the dining room and she set me down in a chair. "Then you won't like what happens next…"

If she had said I would die, I could have lived with that, but the vague ambiguous statement just made me anxious somehow. 'It's not like her to leave me in the dark like this…'

"I guess I better get back on my feet then…" I muttered, looking down at my empty bowl as she began to dish a hot soup.

The heat from the broth warmed up my cold body, almost burning on the way down. My stomach ached as I swallowed like it was getting torn open. I hunched over, wrapping my arms around it and leaning against the table.

"The pain will go away soon, your body just isn't used to eating, so it will take a moment."

"That… Would have been nice to know before hand…" I whined. Thankfully she was right and it really did only take a moment to settle. Not long after that, a deep hunger began to overtake me. I started to feel like a wild animal desperate for the food it needed to survive. For the first time, I finished everything in front of me without feeling like I had overeaten.

She served me another bowl, and the same result ensued. By the end of it, I had eaten so much that I was sweating from the heat of the broth warming me up from the inside.

"Are you full yet?" She asked, reaching towards the pot again.

I covered my bowl with my hands just before she poured more into it. "Yeah, I'm full." I wasn't actually, but I was afraid if I ate too much I might throw up, or at the very least regret it later.

She pulled the ladle back. "Right, if you eat too much after being in such a state you'll only get sick."

The fact that she had already fed me as much as she did made it obvious she had just then thought about it. It was weird, to see her in a moment where she didn't have it all together, even if it was just a little thing. Usually, my portions were specifically designed to be just enough for me to gain weight about one pound every week, or every other week at the very least.

It worked pretty well, even if it sucked eating that much I couldn't argue with the results. I looked at my arms which had turned to just skin and bones. 'I guess putting on all that weight probably saved my life…' I brushed the thought to the back of my mind. "So… I have a few days off?"

"Yeah, that's right. Your body was put through an incredible amount of stress. It's amazing you woke up at all. If we tried to do training in any form right now you could end up tearing a muscle or worse. We're going to start slow… So try not to be too discouraged if it takes a while to get back to where you were…"

Chills went down my spine at her cold and agitated tone that came out of her snarling mouth. I wasn't that discouraged to be honest… At least… Not as discouraged as she was angry… I almost hesitated to keep talking. 'How can she make something like that sound like a threat…' I took a deep breath. 'Even after something like a setback this big she still hasn't given up? Or maybe she has, and that's why she wasn't paying attention to the food proportions? Or maybe I'm just overthinking all of this… That couldn't be why she was upset with father , right? Because she wanted to give up and he wouldn't let her?'

"So… I don't have to do any training, with anyone, not even my brothers?"

"That's what a day off is, yeah." Her voice was so matter of fact you wouldn't have thought that this was the first time she had ever given me one outside of times I was literally bedridden by fevers…

I was beginning to get starry-eyed. I had never even had a birthday completely free of training… Though, to be fair… My official birthday was pushed back two years to buy time… pretending like me and my sister were twins… So my birthday wasn't even acknowledged… "Two days… Where I can do whatever I want?" I wasn't sure where I got the number two from, but undercutting "a few" seemed to be for the best, and was still more than enough.

Without realizing it my voice had been escalating with excitement. It was weak and shaky so it certainly wasn't a powerful shout, but it was enough for both of us to pause in surprise nonetheless.

Her eyes narrowed as she leaned back, pausing. "Within reason…"

I tried to get up out of my chair, but my legs were still too tired, and instead of standing up I just bounced slightly and fell back into my seat.

She sighed. It didn't sound like she was disappointed though, it was different somehow. "Of course… You won't be doing much if you can't walk." She jeered a faint smile appearing on her lips.

"Right…" I sank down in my chair. It had always been hard for me to look her in the eyes because of how cold her face always was, but seeing her smile like that made me even more uncomfortable somehow.

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