Chapter 145: Father! (6)
“Father! I’m here!” I cry, tears streaming hot down my face. My throat aches with frustration, each syllable drowned in the rising chorus of voices around me—voices bartering, cursing, calling. Louder and louder, they pile atop each other, burying me, utterly suffocating my words.
Clenching my fist, I sprint, faster than I ever ran in the colosseum, faster even than when I fled from that lion with its crimson jaws.
I tear past a half-dressed woman, her body bound in fragments of armor shielding her chest and hips.
I rush past a man clutching a sword so corroded it looks ready to shatter with one strike.
The cursed lights flash above, staining everything red, then blue, then green, each hue slicing across my blurred vision as I chase the hooded figure—my father; and yet, with each step I take, my father seems further away.
Still, I chase. I cannot stop; my lungs burn, my muscles scream, but I roar out, “Where’s Mother? Where’s Mia!?”
My voice is ragged and claws against the roar of the crowd.
No answer. Only voices layered upon voices, drowning me again. “These shit-colored shitheads can’t quieten up, can they?!” I curse, this time under my breath, the words for no one but myself.
The labyrinth swallows me whole, my shouts stolen before they can reach him. But I refuse to give up.
Pressing forward, I weave, stumble, and push bodies aside; my father ascends again, climbing another set of stairs to the stage above. My pulse pounds as I rush after him, my body contorting unnaturally, barely keeping balance as I drive myself onward.
Frowning faces twist toward me, but I continue to push forward. “Father!” I shout once more, this time with the last fragile thread of hope within me.
“Please!” The word cracks out of me like a child’s cry, and for a moment I feel small again, feel like the boy who once begged that older man for attention, standing at the top of a playground slide with trembling knees.
And then—
He reaches the next alley, just beside another stairway leading up, and he turns; his eyes—bluish-grey, weary, ancient—meet mine.
For a moment, time itself halts. His exhausted gaze runs over me, head to toe, disbelieving, as though he has seen a ghost. His mouth hangs open, stunned, and the wrinkles on his face seem deeper, harsher than I remember.
He looks older—far older than the man I once knew. His steps falter and grow smaller, as though even walking has become an unbearable weight.
“Father!” The word bursts from me, my voice breaking. My chest caves, then swells again as a smile forces its way onto my face.
Staggering forward, my knees tremble, and my arms open, reaching for him, yearning for the embrace I’ve dreamt of for so long.
“Father...” This time it is not a word, not even a whisper. It is thought alone, slipping from me silently, swallowed by the noise around us. But I don’t care. I am almost there.
My body loosens, my knees wobble, but I keep going, every step an agony of hope and fear. Tears blur my sight, but I press forward, two steps away. One.
And then—
Pow.
The sound splits the air, sharp and final.
Crumpling, my body collapses forward, my face slamming into his legs. My hands clutch at his trousers in blind desperation, my teeth scraping against the leather of his shoes. “Fa—”
I don’t finish.
A brutal blow crashes into the back of my head; pain detonates through my skull, my vision bursting white.
“Foolish boy,” a woman’s voice hisses above me, sharp and merciless.
Then—silence.