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Essek has done everything correctly.
The candles are spaced with care, measured rather than symmetrical. Practical wax, unscented - cheap market tapers, the kind a rural household would buy by the bundle and hoard through lean months. He has trimmed each wick to burn slow and even, so no one flame will gutter and drown in its own wax. The hearth is banked low, warm without demanding attention. The drink is prepared precisely as Caleb prefers it: spice without bite, sweetness without cloy, the sharp edges blunted by intention.
Essek gazes out the window.
Outside, the cold has settled with unusual patience. Snow lies undisturbed along the fence line and roof, thin but stubborn, as if the land itself has decided not to rush toward morning. The solstice has a weight to it tonight - the kind that stretches darkness longer than it should reasonably last.
Inside, the cottage is quiet.
That, too, has been arranged. Essek has pushed clutter into neat stacks, shunted books into respectful piles. He has dampened the ambient hum of spellwork, folded his own magic inward until it rests like a held breath. Even the wards - those layered, redundant protections Caleb stitched into the cottage’s bones - feel subdued tonight, their presence a soft pressure rather than a warning.
A ritual requires space.
Essek sets the last candle down and pauses.
Not because anything is wrong. Simply because he is not entirely certain what one does after preparation is complete.
He checks the frosted window, then the door. Nothing yet.
Caleb works late. This is not unusual. There is always one more document, one more spell to test, one more detail that demands precision. Essek has learned the rhythm of it - learned not to interrupt, learned when waiting is a form of trust.
He adjusts one candle by a fraction of an inch and stills, dissatisfied.
No. That will do.
The Long Night Vigil does not require perfection.
It requires presence.
That, at least, is what the accounts say.
In the northern reaches of the Empire - especially the rural stretches where winter is not scenery but threat - there is a tradition observed on the longest night of the year. No festival, no gifts, no bright public joy. Just a household that stays awake together, tending the hearth and listening to the bones of the building the way farmers listen to a storm front.
You keep watch for what the dark brings: a fire that might die, a roof that might groan under snow, an animal grown desperate enough to test a door. You stay awake because sometimes survival is not heroic. Sometimes it is simply… refusing to lie down.
The practical details vary by village and family, but one element repeats often enough to feel like the spine of it: candles lit for each living member of the household. A small constellation of flame meant to last until morning - less prayer than proof. We are here. We are together. We will see the sun return.
Essek understands why such a tradition would form.
What he does not yet understand is why he wants to give it to Caleb.
Essek sits on the edge of the sofa, hands folded loosely, posture composed. He listens to the cottage settle. The low crackle of the hearth. The faint shift of wood as it cools. Somewhere down the hall, a cat stirs and resettles with quiet indignation.
The candles on the table are new. He has made sure of that - purchased them himself, insisted on them, even when logic whispered that Caleb owns enough flame to light a city with the snap of his fingers. The newness matters. The intentionality matters. The small declaration: I paid attention. I learned. I am here.
He is not worried. Not truly.
Caleb is always late. Caleb is always fine.
The door explodes inward.
Essek is on his feet before the sound has finished breaking. The wards flinch - not in alarm, but in surprise, recognizing the violence of the entry and hesitating on what to do with it.
Beau staggers across the threshold with Caleb slung over her shoulder like dead weight, a rush of winter tearing in with her. Snow scatters across the floorboards, melting instantly where it lands. Caleb’s hair is dusted white, lashes clumped with half-frozen melt. His arms hang wrong. There is snow on his coat and soot on the edge of his sleeve and something darker - blood, maybe, or burned fabric - near his collar.
For one impossible heartbeat, Essek does not understand what he is seeing.
Then he does.
“What happened?” he hears himself say, and his voice is too steady, too controlled, as if he can negotiate reality by refusing to sound afraid.
Beau’s face is set into something that is not quite anger and not quite panic - an expression Essek has only seen when she is bracing for impact.
“Artifact,” she snaps. “We found new evidence. New stolen shit. He did the identify - same as always - and it just -” Her jaw works like she’s grinding the words into something she can swallow. “It tried to take him apart.”
She shifts her grip to keep Caleb’s head from bouncing against her shoulder. The motion is careful despite her haste, as if she is furious at the world for daring to make her be gentle.
“It was like - like it was eating him,” Beau says, and the metaphor is ugly enough that Essek’s stomach turns. “Spells and magic, everything.”
Essek is moving without thinking. He reaches them at the table and catches Caleb’s wrist, fingers finding a pulse that is there - present, stubborn - but wrong. Too quick. Too thin. A rhythm that suggests a body still fighting but uncertain why it should bother.
“He’s alive,” Beau adds, because she can read Essek’s face even when he keeps it still. “Barely.”
Essek swallows.
“Bring him here,” he says, and it comes out as an order. Not to Beau. To the world.
He is tempted to move Caleb himself, to shift gravity and give the man he loves a gentler landing. But he knows nothing about this supposed artifact and what sort of magic will yet be required of him this day.
She drops Caleb onto the sofa with a grunt, half-laying him down, half-catching him so his head doesn’t strike wood. His eyelids flutter once, unfocused, then still. His mouth is slightly open. His skin looks pale in a way that isn’t simply from the winter cold.
Beau’s hands hover, then curl into fists.
"We tried healing potions," she explains, "but they didn't do shit."
Essek steps back and casts Detect Magic with careful restraint, keeping the spell shallow. If whatever is in Caleb is devouring magic, Essek does not want to give it another meal.
The results of the spell makes his breath catch.
Caleb’s aura is there - but wrong.
Where there should be structure, there is absence. Not darkness, not emptiness, but the faint afterimage of magic that has already been taken. The channels that once held power are visible only by their edges, like chalk lines after the rain. The remaining power clings to the edges, flickering weakly, uncertain whether it is allowed to exist at all.
Threads of unfamiliar magic still cling to him, dulled and fraying, embedded too deeply to be stripped away without risk. The residual energy from the artifact pulses faintly, inert but present. Waiting.
“The Cobalt Soul offered to use their circle,” Beau says quickly, as if she has been rehearsing this justification all the way here. “To get him to Caduceus. But I can run faster than they can sort their bureaucratic tape, and Caleb has a circle here anyway.”
It is true. Caleb had spent a year poring over the magic required to craft a permanent circle to the Grove - and then teleporting there each day to do the same on the other side. It was a costly use of his power, time and spells bled away day after day, but a worthwhile one nonetheless.
An escape hatch, should anything in the city - or their pursuit of Trent’s trial - turn too dangerous. A reliable path to a healer. And, secretly, an excuse for daily tea with the firbolg.
Essek only knew the last because Caleb had begun quoting Caduceus often enough for the pattern to emerge and question him on it.
It was… good, Essek thought. Caleb seeking counsel - after everything that had happened to him, before the Nein and with them. Good, too, that Caduceus had never mentioned that Essek had been doing something similar. The firbolg had a way of listening that did not demand confession, and Essek appreciated the discretion.
Caleb is already working on a new permanent circle to Veth's shop - not home.
They have both, on separate occasions, made the mistake of teleporting there without knocking.
It is a mistake one makes only once.
Beau's gaze flicks to Essek’s face, hard and intent.
“Don’t yell at him,” she says. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
Essek’s throat tightens. He opens his mouth. Closes it again.
“I wasn’t going to,” he says, and is surprised to find it’s true. There is nothing in him that wants to blame Caleb. There is only the cold, sharp edge of if he dies.
Beau exhales, rough, as if she didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath.
“Good,” she mutters, and then she’s already moving again - toward the fireplace, toward the table, toward anything that can be punched into purpose. “Get the clerics. Now.”
Essek does not need to be told.
He lifts a hand, fingers already tracing the familiar geometry of a teleport spell - and stops.
Not because he cannot.
Because he should not.
If this turns worse - if Caleb’s breathing falters, if the residue of the artifact surges - Essek will need his strongest magic intact. For a teleport. For a counterspell. For a damned gravity fissure to sink himself into if Caleb's body fails completely. He forces the thought into place, clamps down on the instinct to act now at the expense of later.
Instead, he casts Sending.
“Caduceus,” he says, voice clipped and precise. “Caleb is critically injured. Magical contamination. We need you. Rexxentrum. His home. Now.”
The silence that follows is unbearable.
Then the answer comes - quiet, steady.
"I'm on my way."
Essek begins counting.
Not seconds. He is not that optimistic.
Heartbeats.
If there is no arrival by sixty, he will tear open space and bring the healer here himself.
Essek watches Caleb’s chest rise and fall and feels the night expand around them, vast and patient.
This is not the vigil he prepared.
This is something else.
His hands are shaking. He folds them behind his back and forces them still.
The cottage hums as the teleportation sigil ignites.
Caduceus steps out of the circle with the calmness of a man who has seen disaster and refuses to be impressed by it. His eyes take in the room in one sweep - the candles, the hearth, Beau’s posture, Essek’s too-still stance - and then he crosses to the sofa without hesitation.
His hands hover over Caleb, not touching at first. Sensing. Listening with magic that is gentler than it has any right to be.
“He’s alive,” Essek says. It comes out like a plea disguised as a fact.
“Yes,” Caduceus replies. “He is.”
Relief slams through Essek so hard it almost makes him dizzy. It does not last. He'd been watching the human breathe, of course. Logically, he knows this. But hearing it spoken - confirmed - settles something frantic and brittle in his chest.
“What do we do?” Essek asks, too quickly, anger flaring momentarily that he doesn't know.
Caduceus’s mouth tightens, thoughtful. “First we stabilize what’s here.”
Caduceus places a hand over Caleb’s chest and murmurs the prayer. Divine light gathers - soft, steady, familiar.
For a heartbeat, it seems to take.
Then the light dims.
Not dispersing. Not failing. Simply… drawn inward.
Caleb shudders sharply, breath catching as if something inside him has clenched.
And then the light... tugs.
Caduceus inhales sharply - not in pain, but surprise - as the artifact's remnants strain toward him, a thin, almost invisible pull that tightens the air between his hand and Caleb’s chest.
“Oh,” he murmurs, calm but alert. “That’s… not ideal.”
Essek feels it like a cold line drawn through his stomach.
With Detect Magic still ghosting his vision, he sees the residue inside Caleb respond - not flaring, not surging, but reaching. Testing. The damaged channels stretch toward the new source, instinctive and unthinking, as if any offered power is simply something to be taken.
“Cad,” Beau snaps, already moving. “Back.”
Caduceus starts to withdraw his hand -
The pull sharpens.
It is subtle. Almost polite. But it is insistent.
Beau grabs Caduceus by the shoulder and yanks him back hard enough that he stumbles a step, the connection snapping like a thread cut under tension. The divine light gutters and vanishes.
Silence crashes down around them.
Caduceus steadies himself, one hand braced on the table. He exhales slowly, thoughtful rather than shaken.
“Well,” he says after a moment, mild as ever. “That answers that.”
Essek’s hands are clenched so tightly his nails bite skin.
“It will take anything,” he says, voice low and exact. “It does not care what kind of magic it is.”
“Yes,” Caduceus agrees. “And if we keep offering it more, it won’t stop at him.”
Beau swears under her breath, vicious and heartfelt.
"So what the fuck do we do?” She snaps.
Essek watches Caduceus look at Caleb - at his shallow breathing, the faint tension still coiled beneath his skin.
“We don’t feed it,” the cleric says gently. “We let it starve.”
The words settle.
Waiting is no longer a choice.
It is the only option.
“Apart from the frankly rude magic leftover inside of him," Caduceus continues, "physically, he is just… drained,” he says carefully. “Not wounded. Not in the way healing could fix anyway."
“Greater Restoration,” Essek says immediately. “We have the clerics. We have the spells, the diamonds. We -”
Caduceus holds up a hand, quieting him without raising his voice.
“We can,” he says. “But I don’t think we should.”
The silence that follows is sharp.
Essek stares. “Why.”
Caduceus’s eyes soften. That softness makes Essek want to break something.
“There’s something tangled in him,” Caduceus says. “Residual magic. The artifact didn’t just drain him - it left something behind. A hook. A taste.”
“Essek,” Beau says, her hand closing around his shoulder, grounding and unyielding all at once. “You just saw how that thing reacted to regular healing. What do you think happens if we dump a bunch of restoration magic into him all at once and just - what - hope it doesn’t react?”
The answer is immediate.
Unavoidable.
Essek understands. He understands the mechanics, the risk, the logic of it. He understood the moment the light reached for Caduceus, the moment the residue inside Caleb answered like hunger.
But understanding does not mean acceptance.
He does not want to be reasonable. Not tonight. Not when reason sounds so much like waiting. Not when every instinct in him is screaming to do something, anything, that does not involve standing still and trusting the dark.
He closes his eyes, just for a moment.
Then opens them again.
“How long,” he asks, because he needs something measurable.
Caduceus meets his gaze directly.
“Until morning,” he says.
The words land like snow - silent, suffocating, inevitable.
“Okay,” Beau says finally, voice rough. “Okay. So we watch him.”
Caduceus nods once. “We watch. We keep him warm. We keep him stable. We keep magic away from him.”
Essek’s gaze drops to Caleb. The man looks impossibly fragile without his sharpness, without his words, without the constant contained intensity that makes him feel inevitable.
He stands very still for a moment.
The room is quiet in the way that follows decision - when all arguments have been exhausted and what remains is endurance.
He crosses to the low table without speaking.
The candles are still where he left them, unlit, their pale wax untouched. Practical. Unadorned.
He had learned, in his research, that they were not meant as memorials. Not for the dead. The Long Night Vigil honored the living - those who remained, who stayed awake together, who would still be there when the sun returned.
One candle for each member of the household.
He selects one and strikes the flint.
The flame catches immediately.
Small. Steady.
He sets it down again, closer to the sofa than the others, where its light reaches Caleb’s face. Not as a prayer. Not as superstition. Simply as fact.
Caleb is alive.
And he will still be alive when morning comes.
Essek had prepared a vigil.
Now he will keep one.
Beau breaks the silence first.
She crosses the room with the restless, coiled energy of someone who has nowhere to put their hands. When she reaches Essek, she doesn’t say anything - just dumps a thick bundle of papers from her bag into his arms.
They land unevenly. Notes. Rubbings. Charcoal sketches of sigils. Half-burned fragments salvaged from the wreckage Beau left behind.
“I grabbed everything,” she says. “From the site. From the Soul’s records. From what was left of the damn thing.” Her jaw tightens. “If there’s something in there that tells us how to fix this… you’ll see it faster than I will.”
Essek looks down at the papers.
Then back at Caleb.
Then, carefully, he gathers the stack into one hand and steps closer to the sofa - close enough that his knee brushes the edge of the cushion when he stops.
Research is important. He would have demanded to appraise these anyway if Beau hadn't handed them over. But leaving Caleb's side, even sitting down right now, feels like breaking the vigil before it is done.
“I will not be distracted,” he says quietly.
Beau snorts. “Didn’t think you would be.”
Essek reads each page quickly - eyes scanning patterns, glyphs, annotations written by hands less careful than his own. Each finished page is handed over to the monk. She is quite the detective, after all, and she has the advantage of being present when it happened.
Every few lines, his gaze lifts.
Checks the rise and fall of Caleb’s chest.
The color of his skin.
The candle.
Back to the page.
What he sees is… ugly.
Not in complexity. In intention.
The artifact was not designed to kill. It was designed to empty. To pull magic along established channels until there was nothing left to give, then move on to the next source without pause or remorse.
It was supposed to be a tool, but somehow, it had taken on a will, a need, of its own.
A system that assumes replenishment.
A system that assumes it will always be fed.
Essek’s fingers tighten on the edge of the parchment.
Essek does not allow himself to sink fully into the research. He reads in fragments - patterns, structures, intent - never long enough to forget where he is. Never long enough to stop listening to the room.
This is not study.
This is surveillance.
At some point, Caduceus glances over. His eyes flick from the papers to Essek’s posture, to the way his attention never fully leaves the sofa.
“You don’t have to do that all at once,” the firbolg says gently.
Essek does not look up. “I do.”
Because if there is an answer, he will find it.
And if there is not -
His gaze lifts again, unbidden, to Caleb’s face.
Then he will still be here.
He does not know how many hours pass before the cottage fills.
Jester arrives with a gust of cold air and frantic energy, blue hair in disarray, eyes wide.
Essek thinks he might've called for her. Doesn't remember doing so.
“Ohmygod ohmygod -” she begins, and then she sees Caleb, and her voice breaks. “Oh. Oh no.”
She drops to her knees by the sofa. “Okay. Okay. Hi, Caleb. Hi. It’s fine. It’s gonna be fine.” Her voice is too bright. Too forced. She looks up at Caduceus, desperate. “What do we do?”
And so he explains again.
And so Jester argues and schemes in that beautiful, hope-filled way of hers - casting ideas out like lifelines, tugging at every edge she can reach, searching for the angle that lets her fix this.
But there are no loopholes this time.
When she finally stops arguing, finally understands, she jumps up from the floor and wraps Essek in an embrace he was in no way prepared for.
"He will be okay," she whispers in his ear. "I know it."
Essek returns the hug a few beats too late, but it's okay, because she has stayed there with her arms wrapped around his shoulders, waiting for him.
Fjord comes in after her, broad-shouldered and quiet, carrying blankets and a bundle of bedrolls as if he anticipated this without being told. He takes in Caleb’s still form, his mouth tightening, and says nothing - only sets the blankets down and begins making space on the floor like muscle memory.
Yasha arrives next. She moves like a shadow, silent and careful, going to Beauregard first. They exchange quiet words and a kiss and then Yasha lowers herself by the hearth without being asked. Her gaze stays on Caleb, her hands folded in her lap like a prayer she does not speak aloud.
Veth comes with food Yeza made that no one will eat and a bag of supplies she insists are “just in case.” She tries to joke once, and the sound dies in her throat. She settles on the floor near Yasha, knees drawn up, eyes fixed on the sofa as if she can keep Caleb alive by sheer attention.
Beau paces.
She tries to be still. She fails. She circles the room like a caged thing, cracking her knuckles, then scrubbing a hand over her face, then standing too close to Caleb and backing away again as if she’s afraid to touch him.
Essek watches her and feels, distantly, an odd gratitude.
Beau makes panic look like fury.
It is easier to tolerate.
At some point, Jester dozes off at the table, cheek pressed to her folded arms, still wearing her coat. Fjord moves her carefully into his lap until he, too, succumbs to sleep. Caduceus stays awake, seated in a chair with his hands resting loosely on his knees, eyes half-lidded but alert. He is the calm center of a storm Essek cannot stop.
Essek does not sit.
He stands by the sofa, as close as he can without being in the way, eyes locked on the rise and fall of Caleb’s chest. He tracks it at first - counts breaths like prayer beads. Measures the pauses. Watches for the moment the rhythm falters.
He hates himself for the counting.
He cannot stop.
It's something Caleb would do.
Caleb flinches just after midnight.
It is the first movement he has made in hours, and it nearly knocks Essek out of his body with relief. The flinch is small - more reflex than awareness - but it is proof that something in him is fighting.
He just hopes that something is Caleb and not the artifact.
Essek exhales, not realizing he had stopped breathing.
Beau’s shoulders drop by a fraction.
Jester wakes with a start and immediately leans over the sofa, eyes wide. “Caleb?” she whispers, like she can coax him out by saying his name correctly.
He does not wake.
The night continues.
The candle flickers.
Somewhere around the third hour after midnight, Fjord approaches Essek quietly.
The wizard hadn't even noticed the other man had woken up, much less got off the floor.
Fjord doesn’t speak at first. He simply holds out a cup of the spiced drink Essek prepared earlier, now lukewarm. Essek stares at it like he doesn’t recognize what cups are for.
“You should drink,” Fjord says softly.
Essek’s voice is rough. “I am not thirsty.”
Caduceus has tried to get him to do the same several times tonight. Essek has ignored him.
Fjord’s expression doesn’t change. “It’s not about thirst.”
Fjord remains where he is, solid and unmoving, like a man who has decided this is not a conversation he will lose.
Essek’s throat tightens. He takes the cup.
The drink tastes of spice and warmth and something gentler beneath. The sharp edges blunted. Essek had intended it as comfort. Now it tastes like a reminder that he prepared a kindness and the night rejected it.
He swallows anyway.
“Thank you,” he manages, because Fjord is offering him an anchor and Essek is not proud enough in this moment to refuse.
Fjord nods once and drifts back to the floor where Jester lays.
It happens without warning.
Caleb’s body jerks, sharp and sudden, like a marionette yanked by an invisible hand. His breath stutters, shallow and fast, skin flushing with heat that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“Hey -” Beau is on her feet instantly.
Essek moves at the same time.
Caleb’s pulse is racing beneath his fingers now, frantic and uneven. Heat radiates off him in waves, the kind that speaks of fever, of a system in revolt. The artifact's magic - what little remains - spasms, twisting inward and then out, as if searching for something to take.
For one terrifying moment, Essek feels it brush the edge of his awareness.
Hunger.
“Don’t,” Caduceus says quietly, not to Essek, but to the air itself. “There’s nothing left for you.”
Caduceus is moving then, stripping away blankets, pressing cool cloths to flushed skin, murmuring steady instructions that sound almost conversational until Essek realizes they are anything but. Everything is being measured. Managed. Contained.
Caleb makes a sound - low, raw, dragged out of him as his body arches against the cushions. Sweat beads at his temples. His fingers curl, twitching, grasping at nothing.
Essek moves without thinking.
He takes Caleb’s hand.
The contact grounds him for half a heartbeat - the familiar warmth, the proof of solidity -
Then something answers.
It is not pain.
It is not force.
It is the pull.
Soft. Insidious. Like pressure equalizing. Like a door cracking open because something on the other side knows exactly how much to push.
Essek’s breath stutters.
For the briefest, most terrifying moment, he feels it recognize him.
Not as a threat.
As a source.
His magic flares in reflex, contained only by discipline honed over decades. The residue inside Caleb stirs, stretching toward the contact, threads tightening with sudden, greedy interest.
“Essek,” Caduceus says sharply.
Caleb’s hand isn’t strong around his own - and yet…
Essek tries to pull away and finds that he can’t.
There is no resistance, no tightening of fingers. Nothing that should be able to hold him there. And still his hand remains, caught in a pressure that has nothing to do with muscle or bone.
The realization creeps in slowly, sickening in its certainty. His body obeys him. His will is intact. There is simply no space left between them to withdraw from.
Then the pull deepens.
It does not hurt.
That is the worst part.
It feels like yielding. Like stepping forward when you meant to stay still. Like the moment just before sleep takes you, when the body gives up its sharp edges and sinks. Essek feels his magic loosen - not ripped away, not stolen, but invited. Drawn out along familiar paths with terrifying gentleness, as if whatever is inside Caleb already knows exactly how Essek’s power is shaped.
Cold spreads beneath his skin.
Not absence. Not emptiness.
Thinning.
As if something essential is being diluted, stretched too far, the way ink pales when dropped into too much water. His thoughts blur at the edges. The room feels distant, slightly unreal, as though he’s taken a step backward from himself without meaning to.
Oh, love, he thinks, distantly. This is how it felt for you.
Beau swears and lunges forward, both hands closing around Essek’s arm. She yanks hard.
Nothing.
Her teeth bare. “What the hell -”
She braces a foot against the sofa and pulls again, muscles straining, breath sharp with effort. Essek feels the tug distantly, like someone trying to move a mountain by grabbing a sleeve.
“It’s not him,” Essek manages. “It’s -”
“Yeah, I know!” Beau snaps. “That’s why this sucks!”
She pulls again.
Essek does not move.
For the first time, Beau looks afraid.
Yasha is there suddenly.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t rush. She simply steps between them, one hand settling over Essek’s wrist, the other closing gently - but absolutely - around Caleb’s.
“Enough,” she says.
There is no force in the word.
There doesn’t need to be.
Yasha pulls.
The connection snaps - clean, abrupt, like a wire cut under tension.
The air stills.
Caleb cries out, a broken sound, and then slumps, boneless, his breath hitching once before dragging in again.
Essek stumbles back a step, heart hammering.
“It -” His voice fails him. He swallows hard. “It reached.”
“Yes,” Caduceus says quietly. “It would.”
Yasha does not move until she is certain it is over.
Only then does she look at Essek.
Her gaze is gentle.
“Stay back,” she says quietly.
Essek nods, hands shaking now that he can feel them again.
And somewhere in the chaos -
The candle has gone out.
It lays on its side, wick dark and empty.
Essek sees it at once.
"No."
He lunges for it, swearing in Undercommon, and strikes the flint with hands that do not shake.
The flame catches again, small and stubborn.
He sets the candle back where it was, closer to Caleb than before.
He does not reach for Caleb again.
The fever worsens.
Minutes stretch into something shapeless and cruel. Caleb’s breathing turns ragged, chest shuddering with each breath as if the effort costs him more than he has left to give. Sweat soaks his hair, his clothes, the cushions beneath him. His magic - what remains of it - spasms erratically, flaring weakly and then collapsing inward again.
Veth has taken over with the cool compress - except she wrings it out over Caleb’s forehead instead of pressing it to his skin, letting the water run cold and careful down his temples. It looks like it costs her something to keep that distance.
“He’s burning through everything,” Beau says, jaw tight. “Cad.”
“I know,” Caduceus replies. Too calm. Too focused. He checks Caleb again, then stills.
That hesitation is barely a second.
It is enough.
Veth looks up at Caduceus, eyes sharp and too bright. “Don’t do that,” she says quietly. “Don’t look like that.”
Caduceus meets her gaze, gentle but unflinching.
“If he runs out,” Essek says hoarsely, “what happens?”
Caduceus does not answer immediately.
The silence is a blade.
Essek’s thoughts race, frantic and sharp. Supply. Demand. Systems under strain. If the problem is starvation - if the body is failing because it has nothing left to draw on -
“We could,” Essek says, the words tearing free before he can stop them. “Just enough. Metered. If it keeps him alive - if it gives his body something to -”
“No,” Caduceus says at once. Gentle. Unyielding. “If we feed it, it won’t stop at enough.”
“He’s dying,” Essek says, voice breaking despite himself. “You can see that.”
“Yes,” Caduceus agrees. “And if we give it magic, he’ll die faster.”
The truth lands hard and merciless.
Essek closes his eyes.
For one terrible heartbeat, he considers it anyway.
Veth's hand stills where it rings another cloth.
“Hey,” she says suddenly, not loud but sharp enough to cut through the spiral. “No.”
Essek opens his eyes.
Veth is looking at him now, fully. There is fear there - raw, unhidden - but also something steadier beneath it.
“I want to do it too, believe me, I do, but our boy is stubborn,” she says. “You know that. Stubborn like it’s a personal offense to the universe. If anyone can survive being emptied out and left with nothing, it’s him.”
Her voice wobbles, just barely.
“And if he doesn’t -” She swallows hard. “Then it won’t be because we rushed and fucked it up worse.”
"And besides," she says, fierce now, eyes bright with unshed tears, "if he doesn't, then we'll just bring him back. Whatever it takes."
Essek's breath catches and, after a moment, he nods at her.
Whatever it takes.
Caleb’s body shudders - not violently this time, but weakly, like something collapsing under its own weight. His breathing evens, just barely. The fever breaks a fraction, heat leeching away in uneven waves.
The hunger falters.
Whatever had been clawing outward recoils, starved of momentum at last.
Caduceus exhales slowly. “There,” he murmurs. “That’s it. It’s burning itself out.”
Veth sags forward, forehead pressing briefly to the edge of the sofa. She lets out a shaky breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh she refuses to finish. When she looks up again, she is smiling at Essek.
Slowly, quietly, he returns it.
At some point - Essek could not say when - Beau collapses to sit on the floor. Her back slides down the wall. She stares at Caleb like she’s trying to memorize him in case she loses him.
“I broke it,” she says suddenly, voice flat.
Essek looks at her.
“The artifact,” Beau clarifies. “I smashed it. Like, completely.” She laughs once, sharp and humorless. “Which felt great. For like two seconds. And then it didn’t matter.”
Essek’s mouth is dry. “It mattered.”
Beau’s gaze flicks to him, skeptical.
“It cannot do this again,” Essek continues, forcing the words through the tightness in his throat. “Not to him. Not to anyone. That matters.”
Beau’s jaw clenches. Her eyes shine, and she looks away.
“Yeah,” she mutters. “Okay.”
Silence settles again.
In the quiet, the cottage feels strangely familiar.
Not because this is the same place. Not because the circumstances are the same. But because bodies are gathered on the floor in bedrolls and borrowed blankets, because exhaustion has softened everyone into the shapes they used to be. Because the Nein has always looked like this at the end of something difficult: a heap of stubborn survivors refusing to be alone.
Essek had planned to offer the tower tonight, when they all started filing in.
Now, the thought feels absurd.
Caleb’s breathing grows steadier. His color improves in increments so small they are almost imperceptible. His lashes flutter once, twice. He makes a small sound - more exhale than word - then sinks back into stillness.
Essek watches every movement like it is a miracle.
He does not move from his spot beside the sofa.
He does not sleep.
Hours pass.
The sky outside begins to change, not all at once but by degrees so small they are almost imaginary. Black thins to charcoal. Charcoal to a muted grey.
Essek notices it and is abruptly furious with it.
The world continues. Dawn approaches.
He wants to reach out and seize that inevitability and force it faster.
He cannot.
When the sun is fully settled in the sky, Essek casts Detect Magic once more.
The spell settles over Caleb like a careful touch.
The difference is immediate.
The hollowness remains - channels thinned and scraped raw by overuse, power banked shallow where it once ran deep - but the pull is gone. There is no answering tension, no instinctive reach toward offered magic. The damaged pathways lie quiet, inert, as if whatever had lingered there has finally burned itself out.
Caleb’s magic is his again.
It is weak. Exhausted. Fractured in places that will take time to mend.
But it is contained.
Essek exhales slowly and dismisses the spell.
“It’s gone,” he says, voice low but steady. “The residue.”
Caduceus nods, unsurprised. “Starved itself out.”
“Yes,” Essek agrees. “It had no choice.”
Caduceus moves to the sofa again.
The diamond dust glitters briefly between the cleric's fingers, catching the morning light before dissolving into it. Caduceus murmurs the prayer, slow and careful, as if giving the magic time to decide what it will do.
Essek braces anyway.
He watches Caleb’s aura - not with a spell this time, but with instinct honed by terror - waiting for the answering tension that does not come. Waiting for the reflexive pull. The hunger.
Nothing reaches.
The magic settles.
The diamond dust dissolves, and Caleb shudders - a stronger movement than before, a full-body tremor like he’s hauling himself back from a great distance. His breath catches, then evens, the strain in his body loosening by a fraction that feels enormous.
It holds.
Caduceus’s shoulders ease. “Good,” he murmurs. “That one stayed.”
Essek lets himself exhale at last, the sound sharp and unguarded.
The worst danger has passed.
What remains is recovery.
Essek’s heart lurches.
Caleb’s eyes crack open.
They do not focus at first. They drift, unfixed, as if light itself is confusing. His brow furrows. His mouth moves.
Essek leans forward without meaning to, close enough to feel Caleb’s breath.
“Caleb,” he says quietly. “Do not speak.”
Caleb’s gaze shifts - slow, slow - until it lands on Essek’s face. For a moment, there is nothing in his eyes but blankness.
Then recognition flickers.
The corners of his mouth twitch, faint and stubborn.
“Essek,” he rasps, and the sound is barely a voice at all.
Essek’s throat tightens until he cannot breathe properly.
“You are alive,” Essek says, and it comes out like an accusation. Like a demand. Like a prayer he refuses to soften.
Caleb’s eyelids droop. “Ja,” he whispers. “Trying.”
A laugh catches in Essek’s chest and turns into something like a sob he refuses to release. He swallows it down.
“You should not have been trying,” Essek says, too harsh.
Caleb’s brow knits faintly, confused.
Beau is suddenly at Essek’s shoulder, crouching so hard her knees pop. “Hey,” she says, voice rough. “Hey, Widogast. You with us?”
Caleb’s gaze slides to her. He blinks slowly. “Beau,” he breathes.
Beau’s mouth twists. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m here.”
Caleb’s eyes close again. The effort of being awake seems to cost him more than it should. His breath shudders.
Caduceus pats a hand on the wizard's shoulder. “Easy,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to do anything right now.”
Caleb makes a small sound that might be agreement, might be exhaustion.
Essek’s hand hovers over Caleb’s, then settles lightly on the blanket near his fingers. Not touching skin. Not yet. As if he is afraid that contact might break the fragile stability they’ve built.
Outside, the sky lightens further.
Another Greater Restoration will come soon. The body slowly returned to something closer to itself.
But for now, this is enough.
Essek realizes, with a strange clarity, that the candle he'd lit for Caleb is still sputtering.
He had thought the tradition required flame.
In truth, the flame was only a marker.
The vigil required attention.
It required staying.
The dawn arrives without spectacle.
Light seeps in through frost-webbed glass, thin and honest. It touches the room in pale bands - over bedrolls and borrowed blankets, over the heap of people asleep like old times, over Beau’s slumped shoulders, over Veth curled in Yasha's lap like a cat - one of Caleb's cats sleeping atop the halfling - over Jester’s hair spilling across the table, over Caduceus’s calm posture as he watches the last hours shift into morning.
It reaches the sofa last, as if approaching carefully.
Caleb’s breathing is steady. His face is still pale, but not as stark as before. His hand flexes once beneath the blanket, a small sign of returning strength.
Essek watches the light move and feels something in his chest loosen.
“This is the longest night,” he thinks, and the words are not metaphor. Not poetry. Just fact.
He understands now why a boy from the Zemni Fields would learn to respect a night like this.
He understands the kind of fear that comes with waiting.
He understands that “endurance” is not a romantic concept. It is a body that keeps breathing. It is hands that do not stop shaking. It is a house full of people who cannot fix everything but refuse to leave anyway.
Essek leans forward until his forehead rests briefly against the edge of the sofa, close enough to Caleb’s warmth to feel it.
He closes his eyes.
Not to sleep.
Just to let himself exist in the moment where the worst has not happened.
When he opens them again, the sun is higher - still weak, still winter-thin, but present.
Returned.
Caleb’s eyes flutter open once more, slower this time. He looks at Essek as if trying to understand what he is seeing.
“Still here?” he whispers.
Essek’s mouth curves, small and sharp with relief.
“Yes,” he says. “I waited.”
Caleb’s eyelids droop, and his breath shudders like a quiet laugh.
“Good,” he murmurs.
Essek’s throat tightens again, but this time he does not fight it.
Essek watches the candle - its flame reduced to a stubborn ember-bright point, as if it has spent the night doing exactly what it was asked. According to tradition, he should have snuffed it out with the daylight. He can't quite seem to bring himself to do that just yet.
Caleb’s gaze drifts, following unfocused at first, then steadies on the low table. On the flickering flame. On the remaining unlit candles arranged with careful, deliberate spacing. His brow furrows faintly, as if fitting a familiar shape back together.
“…Those,” he rasps, voice sandpapered thin. “Essek. You…?”
Essek’s mouth goes dry.
“I tried,” he admits. The words come out quieter than he intends. “I read about it. The vigil. The candles.” He glances once - briefly - toward the table, as if the arrangement can testify on his behalf. “I wanted it to be right when you came home.”
Caleb blinks, slow.
Understanding softens his face in a way that hurts.
“You were going to surprise me,” he whispers, and there is something like disbelief in it. Something like warmth.
“Yes,” Essek says, and it feels strange to confess to something so simple. “I did not… anticipate the alternative.”
Caleb’s eyelids flutter. A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth - half a smile, half a wince at the effort of it.
“I made the tea, too,” Essek murmurs and it feels like a confession. He huffs a quiet, helpless breath. “I made everything.”
For a moment, Caleb only looks at him.
Then, very carefully, as if the movement costs him, he shifts his hand beneath the blanket - seeking.
Essek takes it properly this time. Fingers to fingers. Skin to skin. He expects - irrationally - for something to pull.
Nothing does.
There is only Caleb’s warmth. The steady proof of him.
“The candle,” Caleb whispers, voice barely there, “was for…?”
“For you,” Essek says immediately. Then, softer, because it matters that he says it correctly: “For the living. For the household.” His throat tightens. “Because you are still here.”
Caleb’s eyes close. His grip is weak, but real.
“Good,” he breathes, and the word sounds like blessing, like gratitude, like the simplest possible truth.
Outside, the day moves on.
Inside, Essek does not count the hours.
He has survived the night.
And he understands - at last - what the vigil was for.