Khael's eyes remained on Arden alive, weak, but breathing.
He exhaled softly, the tension leaving his body like mist dissolving into air.
"No, Father," he whispered. "We did."
The wind shifted, no longer howling. It sighed, low, soft, and full of release.
A sound not of grief… but of peace.
Around them, the camp began to stir.
The soldiers who moments ago hovered at the edge of despair now stared in silent awe. Their comrades the ones thought lost were breathing again. Faint, fragile, but unmistakably alive.
Then, as the realization spread, the silence broke.
"He did it…" one soldier murmured, voice trembling.
Another followed, louder this time. "He actually did it!"
Soon, the murmurs became a ripple, echoing across the camp like the return of life itself.
But then came the question soft, almost reverent:
"How did you do it?"
Another voice answered from behind them, quiet but sharp.
"No… not how he did it. How did he know to do it?"
All eyes turned to Lord Lito Corzedar.
The elder lord stood tall, though exhaustion lined his face. His gaze drifted to his son — kneeling beside the still form of his brother, aura faintly shimmering with residual golden light.
He spoke at last, his tone carrying both pride and gravity.
"My son carries more than blood. He holds the memory of dragons."
A ripple of disbelief swept through the crowd.
"The memories of dragons?" a healer whispered.
Lito nodded slowly, eyes fixed on Khael.
"He is the Dragon Knight, the last conduit of the Dragon Veins. And dragons… possess knowledge beyond mortal comprehension. They remember not through words, but through instinct through resonance. Every breath of the earth, every flow of Shinrei, every secret of creation itself."
Someone in the crowd muttered, half in awe, half in realization.
"Now that I think about it… that might be the case. The way he moved — it wasn't just power. It was precision. Like he already knew the cure before seeing the sickness."
Lito's eyes softened. "He did. Because he's seen it before — not in this life, but in the echoes of another."
Khael thought, (Well, it's not a lie just not the whole truth either. I have the knowledge from my past life, that's why I know the cause of this. And it's not exactly a lie, since the knowledge I gained as a Dragon Knight helps me too.)
Khael finally stood, wiping the streak of blood from his nose. His aura dimmed, but his composure remained calm, methodical, almost detached.
"Father's half-right," he said at last, turning to face the gathered men and women. "The dragons didn't teach me in words. They taught me through memory through what they felt."
He knelt again, tracing the faintly glowing soil where the ritual sigils had once burned.
"The Vein Rot isn't divine. It's a feedback reaction, a misalignment between the emotional core and the Shinrei stream. The stimulant, Lunaris Dust, tears open the Vein Gates before the body is ready. It pushes Shinrei to overdrive. The soul can't process the surge, so it collapses inward, creating a self-feeding distortion."
He looked up, his eyes reflecting the dimming light.
"What you saw tonight wasn't magic. It was restoration. I reversed the current. I used the healers' Shinrei as stabilizers, harmonized them into a single frequency, and forced the corrupted flow to invert. It's science and spirit working together emotion translated into math."
The crowd fell silent again. No one moved. No one spoke.
He continued, his voice soft but unwavering.
"Emotion has structure. When fear overwhelms, it fractures the Shinrei lattice. When hope enters, it restores coherence. I didn't purify the corruption. I restructured the pattern. The cure wasn't the energy, it was the emotion within it."
He looked down at his trembling hand, faint gold light fading beneath his skin.
"That's what the dragons knew. Shinrei isn't power. It's memory. Every feeling we bury, every sorrow, joy, or regret becomes a current. They taught me that emotions and energy are one and the same. One defines the other."
For a long moment, the only sound was the wind moving through the half-burned tents.
Lito approached slowly, his steps quiet. His eyes lingered not on his son's power, but on the clarity in his voice that fusion of science and soul, discipline and compassion.
"You've done more than heal them," he said softly. "You've rediscovered what the old scholars once believed."
Khael tilted his head slightly, curious. "The scholars.. you mean…."
Lito nodded, his voice almost a whisper now.
"Yes, those ancient philosophers spoke of harmony between the rational and the divine of logic as the language of gods. They believed Shinrei was a bridge between emotion and law. But that knowledge was lost when the wars began. Humanity abandoned understanding for control."
He paused, watching the sigils fade completely into dust.
"And tonight… you reminded me of what they once were. What we once were."
Khael's gaze softened, a faint melancholy touching his features.
"Maybe knowledge never dies, Father. It just waits — for someone foolish enough to listen again."
A slow smile crossed Lito's lips rare, fleeting, but genuine.
"Then perhaps the dragons chose wisely."
As night settled over the northern ridge, the storm clouds dispersed, leaving only the faint shimmer of the ritual's aftermath threads of light buried deep in the soil, like the veins of the earth itself remembering what it meant to heal.
Khael took out his field journal, its leather edges worn and charred at the corners. He knelt once more and began to write his pen scratching softly against the parchment.
Subject: Vein Rot – Field Observation #221.
Confirmed cause: synthetic stimulant Lunaris Dust, designed to force Gate activation.
Observed reaction: Shinrei over-saturation leading to internal feedback collapse.
Treatment protocol: Reversal of Shinrei polarity using synchronized Wave/Bloom harmonics. Emotional resonance alignment key factor.
Effectiveness rate: 87% survival when initiated within four hours of onset.
Conclusion: The human spirit's structure mirrors natural law. Emotion governs Shinrei flow. To heal the body, one must first balance the heart.
He paused, letting the ink dry. His eyes flicked to Arden — sleeping now, peacefully.
"You'll live, brother," he murmured. "But this war's far from over. Whoever made that dust… they knew exactly what they were doing."
Meanwhile on the other sides
The night deepened over the northern plains a vast expanse of ash and iron.
Far from the recovering Veinwalker camp, another fire burned colder, darker.
Inside a torn command tent, General Vael Dran stared at the flickering map projected in red Shinrei light. Cities pulsed like veins under his gaze each one marked for siege, each one tied to his ambition.
He spoke quietly, but his tone carried the weight of finality.
"Now is the time to finish them once and for all."
Across from him lounged a man draped in a mantle of living shadows. His veins glowed faintly crimson beneath pale skin like fissures leaking corrupted light. His eyes, sharp and half-lidded, gleamed with amusement.
Crimson Veinwalker: Shade Affinity.
Name: Varos Kein.
Rank: Elite Operative – Blood Cipher Division.
He smiled slow, wicked.
"Yeah," he drawled, flexing his gloved fingers. "Let the world remember what happens when the Shade walks."
As he stood, the shadows around his feet rippled not reflections, but living tendrils reacting to his Shinrei. The tent dimmed as if the stars themselves withdrew from his presence.
"Their little miracle won't save them," Varos murmured. "They defied the curse, but they can't defy the cost."
The general smirked, unaware of the irony.
"Good. Make it slow."
Varos nodded and vanished into the folds of night — the air twisting in his wake like smoke devoured by the void.
But far from their camp, within the faint shimmer of Khael's newly stabilized ritual field…
a subtle pulse echoed.
A harmonic resonance unseen, unheard but alive.
It spread through the ley veins of the land, quietly rewriting the corruption at its source.
What the enemy didn't know…
was that Khael's "Reversal Ritual" had not merely cured
it had rewoven the emotional lattice of Shinrei itself within this region.
Shade corruption could no longer take hold.
Fear, the root of the Shade Affinity, now transmuted into clarity purified emotion, no longer able to fester into Voidborn influence.
When Varos arrived to sow darkness, he would find nothing to corrupt.
His power would starve in the light.
…
Author's Note: "On the Phenomenon of Shinrei Reversal"
From the Journal of Khael Corzedar
"I have confirmed a dual-reactive phenomenon in Shinrei behavior.
When emotion and reason align when heart and logic fuse, the Shinrei ceases to act as volatile energy. It becomes self-regulating.
This confirms my hypothesis: Shinrei is not only alive; it is intelligent.
The 'Reversal Field' we created didn't just purify emotional residue, it taught the land how to heal itself."
"Perhaps the ancient scholars were right: emotion and science were never meant to be separate paths. They were once one, two veins in the same heart."
"I will call this synthesis the 'Sentient Equation.'
Shinrei that feels, Shinrei that thinks."
To be continue