Outside the room, Liv heard his screams and started banging on the door.
"Let me in!"
Her ice magic was being blocked by an invisible wall.
Maddie had made her way back to the hallway and was now restraining her daughter.
"Calm down," her mother said, "She won't kill him."
"He's in there alone!"
A tear trickled down Maddie's cheek as she watched her daughter's suffering.
"She'll tell her the truth won't she?"
The thought had crossed Maddie's mind but she hadn't voiced it, "He won't leave you Liv. I promise."
The door slid open and Valerica stepped out. Her gaze searched for the healer who was hiding his face behind a magazine.
"You, healer. Heal the boy."
Keith flinched as he dropped the magazine and ran past them and into the room. Liv was about to follow him but her mother was holding her tight.
"You... " Liv said, at a loss for words, looking at her aunt.
Valerica ignored her. Instead her eyes met Maddie's.
"I'm going to have to undue all the weakness you've instilled in him."
Maddie flinched at the words.
"Do you remember that story of Dracula, father used to tell us?" Valerica asked, her tone nostalgic.
"Which one?" Maddie said. She couldn't bring herself to fight. There was no winning against her.
"The one where Dracula was said to steal magic from other species because of their disloyalty."
A visible shiver ran down Maddie's body, "That's a fairy tale," she stammered.
"Is it now?" Valerica grinned.
She stepped through a portal and disappeared, leaving a dreadful thought in Maddie's mind.
Half an hour later Keith the healer left the room. The S-rank healer looked exhausted, his clothes drenched in sweat as if he'd just run a marathon. He asked Maddie if he could leave.
She gave him a curt nod, her attention elsewhere.
The Larduca family rushed into the room, both were by Ryker's side, waiting until consciousness returned. Sleeping was not an option.
The waiting lasted for hours until the first signs of morning appeared on the horizon, a faint grey light seeping into the room from the hallway window.
A tray of food was at the table, but none of them had any appetite. The machines beeped their monotonous rhythm, each sound a small confirmation of life.
His eyelids fluttered open. As if deja vu was playing a cruel trick on him.
"Ryker!" Liv and Maddie cried in unison.
Heat radiated through his chest and a weak smile appeared on his face. Seeing them made everything better.
"How are you feeling honey?" Maddie gently pushed back a strand of hair from his forehead. The gesture was so tender, so full of love, that it almost broke him.
"I'm sorry," he started, the words tumbling out of him in a rush, "I broke the rules. I should've called you. I put Anna in danger. I should've never entered that dungeon."
Liv pinched his cheek.
"You're an idiot," Liv said.
Her anger melted away as tears started to fall. Maddie held her and they both cried on Ryker's chest.
Guilt took over his happiness.
"Did Anna make it?"
Maddie wiped her tears away, a mask of professionalism falling back into place, a surgeon's composure returning, "She's fine. A few broken bones, but a healer saw to her this morning. Her mother is with her now."
He felt a profound sense of relief.
"I had this weird dream that you had purple eyes and were torturing me mom," he chuckled.
They shared a look. A silent, heavy painful exchange.
"You even claimed to be my mother, then said Liv was in the east."
His smile faltered as he noticed the tension in the room. The way they wouldn't meet his gaze. The way Liv suddenly found the pattern on the blanket incredibly interesting.
"That was a dream right? A weird pain-induced hallucination," he asked.
He needed them to say yes. There was absolutely no way they'd lie to him for years about something so fundamental. No way. But the seed of doubt had been planted, and it was already beginning to sprout.
The truth was a grenade with the pin pulled, and they didn't know how to throw it without it blowing their entire world apart.
"I'm not your biological mother," Maddie finally admitted. Her face looked ancient, as if the admission had aged her a decade.
"Liv isn't your biological sister."
His mind recoiled. The words didn't compute. They were a different language, a code he couldn't decipher. These two women were his entire world. His anchors.
He looked at Liv, she'd turned her face away, but not before he saw the raw pain etched onto her features.
"B-but we have the same hair, same eyes."
"We're family," Liv mumbled, her back still to him, her shoulders shaking slightly, "We're all Dracula's. Just not space magic like that woman."
"And that woman?" he pressed, a cold dread seeping into his veins, settling in his stomach like a block of ice.
"Valerica is your mother and Isabella is your sister," Maddie said, looking him directly in the eye.
Everything clicked into place with horrifying clarity. The woman in the hospital room wasn't a hallucination. The woman who tortured him was his mother.
The room felt too small, the air too thin.
"I need some time alone," he said, his voice hollow.
"Ryker-" Liv started.
"Please," he begged, and it was that single word, that raw desperation that broke them.
Nodding, they filed out of the room, the silence following them a stark contrast to their emotional entrance.
The quietness of his thoughts didn't last long. A phone notification, an incredibly loud sound. Expecting a message from Brock or the gang, he glanced at it.
A message from Valerica Dracula. A new contact in his phone.
"You will be going to Meridian Academy in two weeks. I've already arranged for your acceptance."
She had decided his future without him. Like he was a pawn on a chessboard.
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
"I'm not leaving my friends," he typed back, sending a message of defiance, trying to reclaim a piece of himself.
"The golem and dryad will also be joining you. Little bat, your family will cease to live and Revera City will cease to exist, if you disobey. "
It wasn't a threat but a statement of fact.
Fury was building inside of him but his fear extinguished it.
"An Adventurer's Guild representative will conduct your F-rank trial tomorrow. You're not allowed to use space magic. Use ice instead."