Chapter 65 The Weight Of Blood

• Daren stood frozen where Lucy had been, the air still rippling faintly, like heat wavering over dry asphalt at noon. One blink—and she was gone. His heartbeat hammered against his ribs, loud, uneven, like it wanted to claw out of his chest. He had known the rhythm of fear, of battle, of pain. This wasn’t that. This was deeper. Older. Something that made his marrow stir, as if awakening. Recognition.
• Anak, remember this… His father’s voice rose unbidden from memory, rough but steady, carved into his blood since childhood. Healers are rare. If you ever meet one, it is your layunin to protect them. Your life is tied to theirs. Without you, they fall. Without them, we are nothing.
• He had been six the first time he heard those words. Too small to hold a real blade, too young to understand their weight. He remembered looking up at his father, clutching the wooden stick his cousins had given him, eyes wide. It had felt like a story then, one of those alamat whispered around fires about warriors and their chosen ones. But his father’s face, lit by orange embers, had carried no trace of myth. It was destiny. His father had pressed a calloused hand to his chest, just over his heart, and said, “Your blood carries it. Shield. Bantay. Protector. It is who you are.”