4-4

Eight-year-old Mardias knelt on the ground, trying to find his fallen training dagger. The rain was too heavy; as soon as he bent down, it felt as if countless small pebbles were hitting his back. Besides water, his tightly closed eyes were also filled with mud, and trying to open them caused a stinging pain. He thought he had found the hilt of the dagger and was about to grab it when a kick struck his chest. He rolled onto the ground and then heard something scraping across the puddled surface, sensing it was the prelude to another attack. Instinctively, he curled up and covered his front with his hands. In the next half-second, he slightly opened his eyes and saw a tall, silent, rain-blurred black figure standing under a stone pavilion not far away. It was his grandfather, Panthonia. He had been watching the fight from the beginning.

Mardias thought that at least his grandfather could say something. When the adult combat instructor pressed his face down into the muddy water and kicked his abdomen, there was no need to consult his grandfather. Mardias didn't know what to do to end his current predicament. He thought he was fast and fierce enough, but his hands and feet were so Shawlt and weak compared to his opponent's. Every time he stabbed with the dagger, it was like throwing a stone into the sea from a high cliff, unable to make any splash. He hoped his grandfather would tell him what to do to escape this relentless beating and humiliation. He also wished his grandfather would say, "You don't have to kick him like that; he's just a child." But reality had nothing to do with Mardias' wishes. The black figure still just stood there, like an extinguished, unattended lighthouse on the coast.

A year later, he finally seized the weapon from the combat instructor and subdued him during practice. His grandfather stood in the same place with the same posture, saying nothing. Not long after that, he sent Mardias to conflict zones outside Stormwind City, one after another, infiltrated by MI7 members. During the five years of continuous field training, the first two years were the hardest. From the age of twelve, rapid growth in height and physical strength quickly broke through many obstacles that had troubled Mardias before. He believed that some qualities, which only the heir of MI7 could possess, had undoubtedly appeared in him.

Fourteen-year-old Mardias returned to Stormwind City. He had grown much taller but found that the black figure was no longer as imposing. His grandfather sat in a wheelchair for a long time, always followed by a physician. He was old and unable to fight, Mardias thought. However, when he started talking to his grandfather again five years later, his mood slowly approached that of the child who used to roll in the mud. For every sign of aging he found in his grandfather, there was another thing full of oppression and threat that countered it, making the weakness brought by physical aging ultimately an illusion. The deep wrinkles trembled above his gray-white eyes, which still had profound insight, seeing through people as easily as picking leaves from a lake. Talking for a long time made his voice hoarse, and he coughed. His subordinates still listened carefully, fearing that a misunderstanding or oversight would plunge them into endless suffering. His entire skeleton seemed to be collapsing inward, unable to support the dark and powerless skin. Yet nobles still had to humble themselves to meet him, as if looking down on this frail old man was a universally acknowledged grave sin. During this period, Mardias often felt anger towards the gazes that scrutinized him. Those countless eyes were not genuinely paying attention to him; they were trying to find the image of the old man in his youth through Mardias.

Three years later, when Jorgen went to Stromgarde, Mardias, who stayed in Stormwind City, noticed that his grandfather's body had become even more frail and his need for living space had shrunk. Most of the time, he lay in bed with his eyes closed. His face was so withered that from a distance, it was almost impossible to detect the presence of eyes and lips, like an unfinished puppet abandoned. He no longer listened to reports or read documents, seeing no one except Mardias and the caregivers.

One day, Mardias ran into a caregiver just coming out of his grandfather's bedroom. The caregiver looked embarrassed, muttered an apology, and left close to the wall, carrying a basket. Mardias saw a lump of sheets in the basket, with dark yellow stains on the white folds. Mardias could guess that such things had been going on for a long time, but it was only at this moment, seeing it with his own eyes, that he suddenly realized that a person's life develops from a perfect zero to a firm one, and then returns to an empty zero. His grandfather's life was about to sink into the bottomless black abyss of zero. Mardias thought, perhaps in some corner of Stormwind City, someone was trembling at the memory of Panthonia Shawl. If that person knew that the one he feared was now incontinent in bed, would he immediately regard his former awe as the most ridiculous thing, sweeping it into the trash heap of his heart?

Old people often lose recent memories when dying and recall very old things. When Mardias realized this change was happening to his grandfather, he tried to spend more time with him. This was genuine voyeurism because his grandfather sometimes didn't even realize someone was sitting by his bed. Mardias just wanted to know more about him. It wasn't about what he could still learn from his grandfather but about what kind of person his grandfather was before he became the black lighthouse who watched his grandson get kicked and limited his contact with his mother.

In the many hallucinations of the past, Mardias tried to find messages he could understand. Once, he was convinced that he had become the person who gave up the position of head of MI7 in his grandfather's eyes.

His grandfather held his hand.

"Dean."

Mardias remained silent.

"Answer me."

His grandfather's hand squeezed a little tighter. The more he exerted, the more Mardias felt the weakness of his fingers. He felt troubled; he didn't know how his never-met father talked to his grandfather. But he decided to try.

"I'm here, father."

Using this never-used word made Mardias feel awkward.

"Remember, remember," his grandfather said.

"Remember what?"

"Who are you?"

"I... I'm Dean Shawl, father."

"No. The name doesn't matter. You are... my... heir. Responsibility... remember."

Mardias slowly withdrew his hand. He didn't want to sink too deeply into his grandfather's memories, especially one that made him doubt his significance.

There were also some experiences Mardias couldn't understand. Once, his grandfather opened his eyes, crossed his left hand over his chest to the right, moving his entire upper body slightly to the right as if trying to reach something on the bedside table. This strenuous movement made Mardias uncomfortable. He looked at the table, where there was only a clock and a pen. He picked up the pen and put it in his grandfather's hand.

His grandfather's fingers, like weak strips of cloth, wrapped the pen into his palm, then transferred it to his right hand, while his left hand slowly lifted forward. At this point, Mardias could clearly see the wide and long scar on his grandfather's left arm. It had been there for many years, probably cut to the bone. He always wanted to know who caused it. The wound was not only deep but in a special position. If someone could cause such an injury on the inner arm, they should have had a chance to take his grandfather's life. It must have been the result of long-term torture—he stopped speculating.

Then Mardias saw his grandfather's right hand, holding the pen, slowly approaching his left palm, which curled as if holding something. The pen tip stopped just before touching this invisible object. Mardias didn't know how long it paused. He only knew that during this time, his grandfather's gaze slowly changed from the emptiness of entering a hallucination to the deathly desolation close to reality. He turned his eyes to look at Mardias, then put down the pen and closed his eyes. His breathing, the breathing of a dying person, dragged a thousand pounds of weight through thorns aimlessly every second it continued.

He woke up. He knew some things couldn't be seen by me.

About a week after this incident, the caregiver knocked on Mardias' bedroom door in the middle of the night. Almost as soon as he opened his eyes, he knew what had happened. Many people accompany their dying relatives day and night to prevent them from dying alone. Mardias didn't do that, but he had been staying in a small room temporarily vacated on the top floor of MI7, very close to his grandfather's bedroom. Three minutes later, he saw the scene he had foreseen countless times.

Mardias knew that many people in the world hated the person who once belonged to this corpse; they wished Panthonia Shawl would die miserably. In fact, he stopped breathing in his sleep. But Mardias couldn't say this was a peaceful, painless death. No death can eliminate pain. Even if death is indeed a so-called sleep, this sleep is earned after a long and torturous dying process.

He didn't think he ever hated his grandfather, even when he was constantly kicked and received no help. Perhaps it was because, in his grandfather's educational system, emotions were absent—whether positive or negative. Besides the so-called MI7 leadership qualities, what else did he leave me?

There must be something else; otherwise, he wouldn't have spied on his past memories.

Outside the window, it would be at least two or three hours before dawn. Darkness surrounded Mardias. He realized that at this moment, everyone related to him by blood had fallen into the dark.

He sat by the door, one leg stretched out, the other propped up, thinking.

Ten minutes later, he realized he had to notify Jorgen.