Beast Empire

Carrying the Weight

It had been a week since they buried Lila, and Ethan still woke up crying.

Every morning brought the same cruel moment: a few seconds of forgetting where he was, why everything felt wrong. Then reality would crash back. His mother's blood on his hands. Her final words. The way she'd looked at him before

He could never finish that thought.

Marlin didn't let him stay in the darkness. "Up," his father said every dawn without fail. "We have work to do."

Work. As if anything mattered. As if the world hadn't ended a week ago.

But Ethan got up anyway, because what else could he do? His mother had given her life so he could live. The least he could do was try.

"You need to remember the basics," Marlin said one morning, his voice cutting through the fog in Ethan's head. "I taught you tracking when you were eight. Finding water. Reading signs. But now your life depends on it. So we review everything."

Ethan wanted to say he remembered. Wanted to say he wasn't a child anymore. But maybe grief had eaten holes in his memory. Maybe he was as useless as he felt.

They walked through the forest while Marlin pointed out things Ethan should know. Glassleaf shoots. Safe mushrooms. Animal tracks. Ethan nodded when his father expected it, answered when asked questions. But inside, he was screaming.

"You're not paying attention," Marlin said when Ethan walked past obvious deer tracks without noticing.

"I'm trying," Ethan said, but it sounded like a lie even to him.

"Try harder." His father's voice was sharp, almost angry. "Your life might depend on this."

Ethan wanted to scream. Wanted to say he didn't care about his life. Wanted to ask why he should care about surviving when his mother didn't get to survive. When she'd died because of him. Because he'd been stupid and curious and couldn't just leave the glove alone.

But he didn't say any of that. His father's eyes looked hollow too. Marlin had lost her too. And he didn't have the luxury of falling apart when he had to keep Ethan alive.

So Ethan tried harder. Even though it felt like moving through water. Even though every lesson felt meaningless.

Then, in the third week, they found the rabbit.

Its leg was shattered. The creature dragged itself across the ground, leaving a trail of blood, whimpering in agony. When it saw them, it tried to run, tried and failed and tried again, desperate and broken.

Ethan dropped to his knees beside it without thinking. "I can help," he said, meaning it with everything in him. "I can fix this."

His right hand touched the rabbit's leg. He focused on that night with Ember, the warmth and light and the feeling of sharing life itself. He concentrated so hard his head hurt.

Nothing.

The power that had saved Ember was gone. Dead. Like everything else good in his life.

"Work," he begged, pressing harder. "Please, please work!"

But his hand stayed cold and dark and useless.

"Why?" The word came out as a sob. "Why can't I help? I saved Ember. I know I can do this!"

"Your power is blocked," Marlin said quietly.

"How? Why?"

"Guilt."

One word. One single word that cut Ethan open and exposed everything festering inside.

"You blame yourself," Marlin continued, kneeling beside him. "That guilt is strangling your ability to help anyone."

Ethan stared at the suffering rabbit, tears blurring his vision. "But this is what I do. Death and more death. I can't even save one creature."

"Healing isn't just magic." Marlin pulled out cloth, small branches, and a pouch of dried herbs. His hands were steady as he crushed moonpetal leaves and applied them to the rabbit's leg before splinting it, calm and sure where Ethan's shook and failed. "Sometimes it's knowledge. Care. Patience."

They kept the rabbit for three days. Ethan fed it, checked its splint, sat with it for hours. Every time he looked at its leg, he tried to heal it. Every time, the power refused to answer.

On the fourth day, the rabbit hopped away into the forest. Alive. Limping, but alive.

"You saved it," Marlin said.

"You saved it," Ethan corrected bitterly. "I just watched."

The weeks blurred together after that. Some days Ethan could focus. Other days he just went through the motions, numb and empty.

When Marlin asked if he wanted to learn hunting, Ethan couldn't even consider it.

"I've killed enough," he said. The words came out flat and dead.

Marlin didn't argue. Didn't push. Just nodded and said, "Then you gather. I'll hunt."

Ethan was grateful for that. At least gathering plants couldn't make him more of a monster than he already was.

Winter came and Ethan barely noticed. The cold felt distant, like everything else. They survived because Marlin made sure they survived. Ethan just existed.

But something strange started happening. The forest creatures that had always been drawn to him began returning. During the worst of his grief, they'd kept their distance not from fear, but as if his pain had disrupted whatever usually attracted them. Now they are coming back. A family of glowmice slept near his head one morning. Cloud moths made nests in their shelter. Even a young fawncat started following him during gathering trips.

"They remember what you were," Marlin said, watching a harmony bird land on Ethan's shoulder. "Before the guilt took over. They know your heart is still gentle."

Ethan wanted to tell him they were wrong. That his heart was as dead as his mother. But the bird chirped softly and he didn't have the energy to argue.

Spring came eventually. Six months had passed since that terrible night. Ethan had survived a full winter in exile and he wasn't even sure how.

The grief was still there sharp and cutting and constant. But he could breathe around it now. Could eat without gagging. Could sometimes go an hour without remembering the blood.

He turned fifteen sometime during that spring. Ember brought him a colorful feather as a gift. Marlin didn't mention it, but he made Ethan's favorite meal that night or at least, his version of it with forest ingredients.

The healing power still didn't work. Ethan tried every few days, whenever they found an injured creature. The warmth never came.

"I don't think it's coming back," he told Marlin after another failure.

His father was quiet for a long moment, then sat down beside him. "There are two problems, son. Not one."

Ethan looked up.

"The guilt is blocking you, yes," Marlin said carefully. "But there's something deeper. Your left hand's death power it's much stronger than your right. Always has been. The healing magic is there, but it's like trying to whisper while someone's shouting. The death magic drowns it out."

"So even if I let go of the guilt..."

"It still might not work. Not unless your healing power grows strong enough to compete." Marlin met his eyes. "You need both, Ethan. You need to work on forgiving yourself not because you don't deserve to feel guilty, but because carrying that weight forever will destroy you. And you need to strengthen your healing magic until it can stand against your death power."

"That sounds impossible."

"It's not. It's just hard. And it takes time." His father's expression was serious but not unkind. "The guilt makes everything worse, yes. But even without it, you'd need to train. Your healing is weak compared to your death magic. That's not your fault—it's just how you were born. But you can change it with practice."

Ethan stared at his hands—one gloved and deadly, one bare and powerless. Two opposing forces, and one completely overwhelming the other.

"So I have to get stronger," he said quietly. "And I have to... let go."

"Yes. Both." Marlin's hand settled on his shoulder. "You can't skip the guilt work by just getting stronger, and you can't skip the strength work by just feeling better. You need both to heal properly."

"I don't know if I can forgive myself."

"Not yet, maybe. But someday." His father's voice was gentle but firm. "Your mother wouldn't want you to carry this forever. She gave her life so you could live, not so you could spend the rest of your days hating yourself." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "And son, if I had been in her place, I would have done exactly the same thing. Any parent would. That was her choice, made out of love. Don't let guilt steal that from her memory."

The words hit harder than Ethan expected. His throat tightened.

"When you're ready," Marlin continued, "we'll start training your healing power. Build it up until it's as strong as your death magic. But while we do that, you also need to work on forgiving yourself. Not all at once. Just... a little bit at a time."

Ethan nodded, not trusting his voice.

That night, sitting by the fire as the twin moons rose, something settled in his chest. Not peace exactly, and not hope. But maybe the beginning of understanding.

He had two paths ahead of him, not one. He needed to get stronger and he needed to heal emotionally. Both were necessary. Both would be hard.

But maybe just maybe they were possible.

One evening, months into their exile, Ethan looked at his father across the fire. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Marlin looked at him, waiting.

"For not giving up on me. For being here when I don't want to be here myself."

Something flickered in his father's expression. Pain, maybe. Or understanding.

"You're my son," Marlin said simply. "Where else would I be?"

They sat in silence after that. The hurt was still there, it would always be there. Tomorrow would hurt. The day after would hurt. Every day would carry that weight, maybe forever.

But Ethan had survived this long. They'd built a life here simple, painful, but real. The fire kept them warm. The shelter kept them safe. And his father was still here.

And somehow, that made the constant hurt bearable.

And Ethan had something he hadn't had in months: a path forward. Two paths, actually one for his power, one for his heart.

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough to fill the hole Lila left.

But it was something. And for a grieving fifteen-year-old trying to survive in exile, something was infinitely better than nothing.