Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!-Chapter 133: Phoenix
Bursting into Melissa’s suite, Lionel stormed straight to the only bedroom with the light on. There she was, Natalia, his sister, frail and still under the dim bedside lamp. The sight slammed into him hard.
He dropped to his knees on the taupe carpet and held her hand. With his free fingers, he pressed gently against her wrist, counting the erratic pulse. One hundred beats per minute. To most people, that was within a normal range. To Natalia, it was unnaturally fast.
He moved his hand to her forehead and recoiled slightly.
It was scorching, just like that night ten years ago.
“She’s stabilised, if that was what you’re wondering.”
He didn’t need to turn to recognise that voice. Gone was the warm, girlish lilt from when they were still close friends. In its place was a tired, faintly disdainful tone, one Melissa had often used on him since their reunion.
“I know you must have questions, Mel.”
“Not as many as you’d think, Lionel. I’ve figured out most of it… except…”
He felt her presence draw closer.
“You know why she’s not waking up, don’t you? That lunatic rammed his hand right through her abdomen. I did what I could, but…” She cast an uneasy look at the bedroom door.
Lionel was too distraught to notice. His face drained of colour as he yanked back the thick quilt. “Through her abdomen? Then we need medical help. Now!”
Natalia’s shirt had ridden up, just enough to reveal a smooth and unmarred stomach. There was not a single scar or bruise.
“She’s… physically healed.” Melissa glanced behind her again, frowning, seemingly asking someone else. “But that’s not the point, is it?”
Then what is the point?
Was it really possible for Melissa to mend a serious injury in less than an hour?
As if reading his mind, a soft, melodious voice spoke from behind him.
“Lionel, you’re fixating on the wrong detail.”
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the bedroom doorway were two striking women, both of whom he recognised instantly. Astra and… Eydis?
During his days as a desk agent at the Council, Astra’s name was already circulating like a myth. She hadn’t aged a single day.
Next to her, Eydis leaned casually against the doorframe, her long dark-brown hair falling over her blazer. Hard to believe she was the same shy, bespectacled teen Natalia met at the Academy orientation.
Eydis caught his questioning gaze with an enigmatic spark, as if daring him to read her, and added, “Natalia is not in immediate danger, but she’s not waking up. And I think you know exactly why.”
Something clicked in Lionel. He knelt by Natalia again, but this time he reached out with his thoughts.
Perceiving another’s Arcane Structure wasn’t something most Gifted could do. But as an EM type, he could sense those subtle electromagnetic traces magic leaves, a sort of proxy.
His eyes widened, and Melissa saw his reaction. “Now you get it.”
“You see it too?” Lionel asked reflexively, looking up.
That earned a scoff. “I’d be a pretty lousy doctor if I couldn’t. You know this is partly your mess, Lionel. Taika works with you, right?”
His lips pressed tight as he flicked a look at the two young women still standing in the doorway. Confirming anything could drag them further into danger.
Melissa’s frustration was building. “For Taika to move around here freely, finding us so easily, there’s only one explanation. I know whose jurisdiction outranks the local Kiwi police and I bet you do too. So cut the crap and tell me everything, or I’ll lay out my theory—”
“Stop,” Lionel rose but kept his voice level. “Knowing too much will make you a—”
“Oh, but I already know most of it,” Melissa shot back, slamming a fist at his chest. “What I need to know is how long this bullshit drags on before Natalia, who, last I checked, is still
your
precious little sister, finally wakes up.”
The words hit harder than her punch, and Lionel clenched his jaw tight. He deserved it, every bit of it. He turned to Astra and Eydis, silently urging them to grant some privacy.
Keeping her expression chilled like marble, Astra’s crimson eyes shifted from Natalia to him, unreadable. She said without inflection, “Natalia’s Arcane Heart is transforming on its own, isn’t it?”
Melissa’s attention snapped toward Astra, clearly startled by her deduction, just as Lionel was. His fists clenched until his knuckles cracked.
Even amongst the Gifted, Astra was an anomaly, someone Indigo genuinely seemed to want to protect. Perhaps she did not even realise how much the professor did behind the scenes, working with Lionel to keep her name off Ares’s radar.
There was no point hiding it now. He confessed quietly, “Yes. And we need to stabilise it before it evolves into… whatever pattern she’s internalised.”
Melissa inhaled sharply. “Taika’s.”
“You’ve handled this before, Mel.”
When Natalia was fifteen, her powers surged violently again, as if awakened from a quiet nap. Lionel hadn’t trusted Indigo enough to involve him fully with his sister; instead, shamelessly, he forced himself back into Melissa’s life, pleading for her help.
Melissa stared at her trembling hand before rubbing her temple. “I need time to recharge.”
Turning to Astra and Eydis with a sincere, softer tone, she murmured, “Thank you, both of you. For everything.”
Eydis’s eyes narrowed fractionally, though her expression remained neutral.
Lionel sensed an unspoken exchange between them, but he didn’t pursue the thought. He gently tugged the quilt up to Natalia’s neck, then cradled her cheek.
Still burning up, just like then.
Melissa took another step closer, her blue eyes burning. “It’s about time you told me the truth, you think? Starting with that fire from ten years back.”
Lionel’s fingers twitched. The past crashed into the present, the flames of that fateful night roared loudly in his mind, and beneath it all…
Natalia’s tear-filled voice echoed like a drum.
“Lionel, I… I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me…”
She didn’t remember it but…
She had been telling the truth all along.
But he… he had made her believe it was her doing. His hand balled into a fist at his side. The latch clicked behind him, pulling him out of indecision. He looked up to find Astra and Eydis already gone, leaving without a word and giving them space.
He finally faced Melissa’s expectant stare, knowing the truth was inescapable.
They moved to the living room and sat opposite each other on the sofa. Melissa didn’t press him, patiently watching as he silently wove a Faraday cage around the suite, blocking signals and containing the EM radiation Natalia now emitted as her Arcane Heart evolved.
Silence stretched until he gathered the courage to finally tell the stories he’d kept buried for a decade, long enough to nearly blur the line between truth and lies.
“Our father worked for a mining company out of state, or so we believed. My mum, Natalia, and I stayed in Alchymia, in a rented apartment in the subsidised housing complex…”
The mining job had only been a cover, as Lionel discovered years later. Gifted abilities flowed through bloodlines, and for both him and Natalia to manifest them, their closest kin must have carried it.
“When I looked into it, I found out the complex was actually owned by Ares, and the rent discount was supposedly an employee benefit. Of course, it was really to keep an eye on the children of his Gifted operatives.”
He met Melissa’s eyes. “The building was nearly a century old. Gas lines so corroded that the structure was already scheduled for demolition. They just… hadn’t relocated the tenants yet.”
Melissa’s lips parted in a quiet gasp.
“Natalia hadn’t started that fire.”
A statement. Each and every word could not be more true. He stared at his hands.
That night, pinned beneath a collapsed support beam, Lionel could only watch helplessly as Natalia shielded him with a wet towel, ignoring her own safety.
“Please, Natalia… leave. Run… please,” he choked through the smoke.
“No, I won’t. I can’t leave you,” She protested. Her small, blistered hands strained to lift the beam trapping his leg, just moments before the flames claimed her.
Through teary eyes, he watched the fire creeping toward him, until something else ignited within the smoky haze.
Gold.
The flames changed,
transformed
. No longer consuming, they spiraled across her skin, caressing her, learning her. No—recognising her.
She was…
becoming
them.
How could a newly awakened Gifted do this? In the moment before everything went black, before a surge of energy knocked him out cold, he saw a golden, blazing core on her chest. From it, branches of flame spread like a solar corona—the arcane heart, manifested.
Melissa stared at him, stunned. “She can control a fire that wasn’t her own, at eight years old. That’s… transformation.”
Lionel nodded. “And if that ever got out, it would only be a matter of time before Ares found her.”
He briefly thought of the legends of
Phoenix Fire
. Fire that consumed everything, even itself, only to rise reborn from its own ash, transformed yet eternally unchanged. With every cycle of destruction and renewal, it grew stronger, more radiant, more itself than before.
But legends were just the words their ancestors had given to mysteries they didn’t understand.
That fire had defined her.
He wished it could stay that simple. A Fire-affinity Gifted. But she wasn’t just fire, was she? How long could he protect her when her power grew without limit?
Would she be left broken like Taika, like Orion?
Clearing the tightness in his voice, he explained, “It was only after they confirmed our powers that they permitted our family to live in the suburbs. My lightning affinity, Natalia’s fire… complementary Gifts, nothing special.”
Melissa’s eyes glistened as she absorbed his words. Emotions played across her refined features—anger, sadness, compassion. It was only then he saw how weary and depleted she appeared.
He held back the urge to reach out and reflected on his relentless efforts to deceive them. Natalia most of all.
Her power came from perception, and limiting it had been the only way.
How much longer could he delay the inevitable and protect her from the terrifying power that hungered for hers?
He glanced at the windows, where the sky remained dim. Snow began to fall, sounding like little raindrops. Ahead lay a murky lake, a path without light, without direction.
What was right? What was wrong? He couldn’t tell anymore. He wanted Natalia to live a normal life, but what he had offered her was barely survival.
Wetness filled the back of his palms as he rested his face against them, but a gentle, ocean scent filled his senses as Melissa moved to sit beside him.
A gentle tap on his shoulder. A resigned sigh. She softened her voice for the first time tonight.
“Lionel, you big buffoon.”
He couldn’t help but choke out a laugh.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Chapter 133: Phoenix
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