The healer worked in silence.
Glass clinked. Spells whispered through the air like threads of wind. One assistant wiped the blood from the king's lips. Another pressed a cooling cloth to his brow. Still, he didn't wake.
Carlos stood unmoving.
He could feel the clock ticking. Not in the room—but in his bones.
The healer finally pulled back, her brow furrowed deep. Her gloves were stained. Her hands trembled.
"Well?" Carlos asked, his voice hoarse.
She didn't answer at first.
Then: "It's rosewine."
Carlos blinked. He was surprised but his face didn't show anything. "He drinks that every day." He spoke a sentence, casually. But for the healer, that sentence sounds like a question.
"Not this kind." She held up the glass the king had dropped. Carlos knows this glass, he ordered Kave get this glass immediately after the healer started examining his brother.
"This wine is different. Stronger. It's… a hybrid. More medicine than drink. Refined through alchemy. Meant to heal, in small doses."
Kave stepped forward. "Then why did it poison him?"
The healer turned to them both. "Because of the lilies."
Carlos's chest went cold. "What?"
She motioned around the room, frustrated. "Lilies are everywhere. The palace. The ballroom. The balcony. Even your brother's cloak was embroidered with it. The scent was thick enough to cling to skin."
She gestured to the king.
"When this particular rosewine reacts to concentrated lily pollen—especially in someone with a heart condition—it doesn't soothe. It becomes deadly."
Carlos stared at his brother. "His heart…"
"You said he had a disease, didn't you?" the healer whispered.
"Yes. Heart." Carlos answers. That causes the healer to be surprised. She didn't think the prince would be the one who would answer her question. After all the rumors about the prince were too much. Even if she didn't care about that, it always get into her ear.
+++++++
"The king was spoiling him, look at what the prince did. He points his sword toward his royal teacher."
"He flirted with the minister wife."
"He can't even swing the sword."
"He is afraid of blood, that one time, he cried after seeing the blood."
"Is he really a royal blood?"
"The prince is too proud of himself. He didn't speak back to his teacher because…his teacher is a noble? Not even because he is a commoner, but he is a noble."
"He can't even swing the sword, the only thing he can do with the sword is lift it."
+++++++++++++
Now the kind of prince that he had heard of is speaking to her, a commoner. And the prince that can't even swing his own sword was carrying the king without sweating. And that prince has not looked away from his brother, even though he is afraid of blood. She should have never judged without knowing anything at all.
"That's why it attacked him so fast. His body couldn't resist." The healer replied. But her voice was filled with guilt. And Carlos knows it, after spending time with his soldiers for 10 years straight and fighting together and listening to everything that his soldiers say, he knows when someone is feeling something just by listening to their voice.
—-------------------
"My Lord, I have a daughter named Charlie…..I missed her."
"That is right, My Lord. You have to visit each of our family."
"When the war is over, My Lord has to eat my wife cooking and meet my princess, okay."
"My Lord, we are gonna survive… right?"
"My Lord, leave us…save yourself."
"My Lord....when you meet my daughter, tell her that dad loves Charlie very much."
—------------------------------------
Carlos knows very well about that kind of guilt but he doesn't know what kind of guilt the healer was feeling. But the thing is Carlos doesn't know why the healer is in guilt. But he doesn't need to know, if he wants to change the future, he has to stop caring. To save his brother, he needs to use every chance and everyone to their full potential. Even if he has to use his best friend, he has to. He glanced at Kave. But for some reason Kave might have thought the other thing after eye contact with him.
Kave's face went pale. "It was a trap."
The healer nodded grimly. "He might've survived one or the other. The wine alone wouldn't have done this. The lilies alone wouldn't have either. But the two together…" She closed her eyes. "That combination was designed to kill him. No one else."
Carlos's fists clenched.
He felt it in the air now—the heavy, cloying perfume of lilies. He remembered the garden where his brother waited before the celebration. The walk through the gilded halls. The way the scent followed them.
And worse—he had brushed it off.
Because he had remembered blades in his past life, not flowers.
"I don't have much time," the healer said. "I can keep him alive for ten days. No longer."
"Then we'll find the cure. What is it?" Carlos said.
"There is only one."
He didn't speak. He waited.
The healer looked up at him. "The root of the Elves' Mother Tree."
Silence fell again.
Kave swore under his breath. "That's a myth."
"It's real," Carlos said quietly.
The healer nodded. "The root purifies poison at the deepest level—especially ones that mimic medicine. But it grows only in the Elven woods. And the elves do not take kindly to trespassers."
Carlos's jaw flexed. "Then I won't go as a trespasser."
"You'll need a battalion," Kave said.
"No," Carlos replied. "I'll take the Eastern cohort. Smaller. Loyal."
"You've never led them—You have never even glanced at them. You are too soft to lead them, let me be the one, Carlos."
"No, you have to stay here and you have become so bold even calling me by my name."
"No, My lord." Kave kneels immediately, head down to the floor.
"And, I have led them before." Carlos said. "You just don't remember."
Kave blinked, startled.
"When..?" Kave was shut down by the deadly glare Carlos was giving. He just quiet down, staying kneeling on the floor.
But Carlos said no more.
The healer moved toward her potions again. "Ten days." she warned.
Carlos nodded.
Then he turned to Kave. "The nobles stay."
Kave raised an eyebrow.
"They're suspects." Carlos said. "Every one of them. The wine was changed. The lilies arranged. That's coordination."
"I'll investigate." Kave said.
"I know you will." Carlos reached down, brushing a lock of hair from the king's damp forehead. "But keep it quiet. Only the kingdom can know. If the outsiders know we suspect them, they'll act faster."
"Understood."
Carlos stood tall, one last look at his brother. His voice dropped to a whisper.
"I swore this life would be different."
He turned to go.
Behind him, Kave watched with narrowed eyes. There was something in Carlos's step—like a man who had walked this path before. Too sharp. Too certain. Like a memory walking.
But he said nothing.
Not yet.
The moon was high by the time Carlos stood at the East Gate, the scent of lilies still clinging to his coat.
He wore no crown, no sigil. Only a black cloak clasped at the throat with silver, and the Eastern sword slung over his back—one he had never drawn in this life.
But it fit his hand like memory.
The Eastern cohort waited for him at the base of the stairs. No more than thirty men. Veterans, every one of them. Loyal to the bloodline, not the throne.
They looked at Carlos with questioning eyes—he was only fifteen. Unblooded. Silent. The king's spoiled little brother. Their commander has always been Kave, not the prince.
But something in the prince's stance gave them pause.
Carlos didn't speak like a prince.
He spoke like a commander reborn.
"Mount up," he ordered. "We ride to the border before dawn."
The gate captain stepped forward. "Commander Kave had talked to us about that but we don't have clearance for the woods, my lord. The elves—"
Carlos met his eyes. "We're not asking."
No one argued again.
As the gates groaned open, Carlos looked once over his shoulder.
The palace behind him gleamed gold and white, a perfect dream of power.
But within its walls: a brother fading, a traitor hiding, and lilies blooming still.
He turned his back to it.
And rode into the night.
---
Meanwhile, inside the palace:
Kave stood at the top of the ballroom steps, watching the nobles pace in their silks and fury.
None were permitted to leave.
Not the merchants. Not the old generals. Not the foreign envoys in their brocade.
The doors were shut. The halls were guarded. And word was spreading fast:
Carlos had left.
The king was dying.
Someone had poisoned the crown.
It wasn't said aloud, but it was felt in every glance:
"Who did it?"
"Who knew?"
"Who benefits?"
Kave moved among them like a shadow. Listening. Watching.
And quietly, the palace began to fracture.
Some wept. Some whispered. Some bargained with gods Kave didn't believe in.
And some… smiled too easily.
He made note of them.
---
In the healer's chambers:
The king stirred only once, barely breathing, fingers twitching at the edge of consciousness.
The scent of lilies still filled the hall outside.
The healer had burned some. Removed what she could. But it lingered. It always lingered.
She looked at the boy-king's pale face and whispered, "Hurry, my lord."
---
Beyond the palace, into the deep woods:
Carlos rode without stopping. Sleep was a thing for people without deadlines.
He remembered the map. The forest paths. The warnings.
The elves will not grant mercy.
He knew.
But he also knew this:
He had turned back time.
He had bent fate.
And now it would bend him back.
The Elves' Mother Tree lay days ahead.
And if death waited there—
Then he would meet it sword-first.
The trees grew denser as the Eastern cohort pressed deeper into the wilds.
Carlos rode at the front, hood pulled low. The path ahead shimmered with dew and silence, the kind that warned of blood.
They'd been riding for three days.
And something felt wrong.
The stars were not where they used to be. The old forest trails had twisted into stranger shapes. Even with his memories—battle-hardened, blood-washed—Carlos could no longer recognize the world ahead.
"Even the forest has changed…"
In his past life, it had taken two days to reach the Elven border.
This time?
It had taken three just to see the sky begin to darken.
Carlos clenched the reins tighter.
The past was unraveling. The future wasn't waiting.
And then—
Screams.
A cry from the rear. Then the clash of blades. A horn.
Orcs.
Carlos twisted in the saddle. Shadows thundered from the treeline—hulking, armored beasts with tusks gleaming and blood in their eyes. They came in fast, teeth bared, blades raised.
"Form up!" Carlos barked.
Some obeyed. The Eastern soldiers, his soldiers, moved instantly, shields up, flank lines spreading wide.
But a group near the back hesitated—palace conscripts, new to the ranks.
"He's just a boy!" one of them shouted. "He's not even the heir—!"
Carlos didn't flinch.
"You think this is about thrones?"
A blade sang free from his back. He spurred his horse forward, straight into the chaos.
A soldier screamed. Orcs closed in. Carlos leapt from the saddle like fire, his blade cleaving a beast through the chest in one blow.
"No one dies before I reach that tree!" he roared. "Not. One. Of. You."
He moved like he'd done it a thousand times—because he had. Not in this life, but in another. The way his blade turned. The way he read the battlefield like language.
Steel flashed in the air. Blood hit the soil.
And the men who doubted him—
He saved them.
Three fallen soldiers are dragged from the jaws of orcs by a teenage prince with fury in his bones.
The orcs retreated before sunrise. What few remained bled into the trees.
Carlos stood over the bodies—only two lost. It could have been far more.
"Commander…" one of the Eastern captains knelt beside him. "What are you?"
Carlos didn't answer. His eyes were on the horizon.
---
Later that day…
The Elven border rose ahead.
But it was not how he remembered it.
The trees were alive—breathing, almost. Bark folded in patterns like runes. Vines coiled like serpents. There was no gate. No welcome. Only a towering green wall of tangled life.
They couldn't pass.
Carlos approached slowly, pressing his palm to the bark. It shivered beneath his touch.
"Even the forest is rejecting me."
Behind him, the soldiers waited.
Three days had passed. Three days of fighting, bleeding, changing.
Carlos had memories of this place—of trees that once opened at his whisper. Of elves who once trusted him.
But now…
Even that had shifted.
"All of this," he muttered, "just because my brother waited for me in the garden."
And he realized:
Every change reshaped the world.
Even the smallest mercy.
He lowered his head.
"Ole," he whispered. "I need power."
There was silence.
Then—warmth.
A voice, not quite human, echoed in his mind:
"We are the god of dreams. You are our mask."
Carlos's breath caught.
"As long as you dream—truly dream—you may take anything. But only if it is for him."
Carlos's eyes widened. He closed them.
He remembered his brother's pale face. The blood on his shirt. The slow flicker of breath.
He dreamed of fire.
And fire answered.
A flame bloomed in his hand. Not earthly. Not sorcery. But divine.
It crackled with silver and gold, heatless in the palm—but deadly when cast.
Carlos turned to the trees.
He raised the flame.
"I do not ask for permission," he said.
"I dream for my brother."
And the fire roared.
It shot forward, not scorching, not destroying—but unraveling.
The forest opened.
The path to the Elven village twisted open like a wound in the world.
Gasps rang out behind him.
"The gods—"
"He's only fifteen—"
"But the god's power awakens only when the person turns sixteen—!"
Carlos turned.
His cloak swirled in the ash light. His eyes glowed like embers. The mask of the god, still only half-formed, flickered across his shadow.
"Then let the world know." he said quietly, "that I do not wait for time to bless me."
"I take what I need."
He turned and walked through the broken forest.