In the weeks after his recovery, Leon returned to the usual way of his routine. He attended his lessons, ate with his family and read through the afternoons. The only thing that changed was how he answered whenever cultivation came up.
Before the breakthrough, he had been the one asking Marcus for practice. Now he kept finding reasons to put it off, and when he finally agreed to a light session, Marcus took him to the courtyard and asked him to stay calm and regulate his breathing.
Leon sensed the essence around him with no difficulty. The trouble began when Marcus told him to draw a small amount inward. The familiar pull brought back the moment of his breakthrough, and the emotions that had followed came with it.
Like the warmth of Mira and Lyra, and then the pain of losing them. The memories did not feel like someone else’s anymore. His concentration broke, and the thin thread of essence he had gathered scattered.
Marcus lowered his hand. "That’s enough for today."
"I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold it."
"Did something feel wrong?"
"No. I just couldn’t concentrate."
Marcus studied him for a moment, then nodded. Leon asked to postpone the next session, and the one after that. By the third time, Marcus had stopped suggesting dates. He still walked past the courtyard each morning, and Leon noticed that he slowed whenever he passed his the door.
Vera was less willing to let it pass. She brought it up that night, when there were only two of them.
"It’s been three weeks, Marcus. He used to ask about training every morning," Vera said, concern showing in her eyes.
"We nearly lost him in a breakthrough. If he wants time, I’ll give him time."
"Can’t we do anything about this? He is clearly keeping something to himself."
Marcus rubbed his forehead. "Then he’ll tell us when he can. We can only support him, not force him."
Vera didn’t argue, but she also thought this was the right path or now, but she was also worried about him.
The next morning, she called Hanna to the sitting room.
Hanna had looked after Leon since he was an infant, stepping in whenever Vera was occupied with the estate, and he was comfortable with her. So Vera decided to make it official that day.
She assigned Hanna as his personal maid. She would arrange his schedule, work with his tutors and see to whatever he needed.
Then Vera lowered her voice. "If you notice anything unusual, in his health or in how he behaves, come to me. Even if it seems small."
"I will, my lady."
Hanna took to it quickly. Within days she knew he wanted the window open whatever the weather, and that he read longest when the house was quiet. She managed his mornings in order and left the rest of the day open for Leon to take his own time.
"Shall I have your new practice clothes ready?" she asked once, as lightly as she could.
"Old ones still fit, leave them."
She left them where they were, and stayed by his side, saying nothing.
Roland also noticed Leon new changes but in his own way.
’He used to come to the training yard whenever I practiced lightning, and asked about the footwork or the flow of the current. Now when he is not here I feel something is missing,’ he thought while practicing new techniques.
One afternoon, Roland was practicing his forms when he caught a movement in an upstairs window. Leon was there, watching him.
Roland lifted his hand to wave, but Leon stepped back out of sight. He finished his set and went up, and found Leon in the corridor with a book on his hand, as if he had never left it.
"You could have come down."
"I wanted to finish this first."
"You’ve been finishing it for a week." Roland said it lightly, but he didn’t smile afterwards. "I’m not asking you to train. You just used to like watching."
Leon turned a page he hadn’t read. "I still do."
Roland waited, but nothing more came. He ruffled Leon’s hair, and went back down to the courtyard. That evening he told Vera the changes he noticed about Leon, and she told him to be patient.
Leon knew what they had noticed. But he didn’t address any of this, and continued his days. He sat through his lessons, joined the family in dinner, but he stayed out of anything that might lead back to his cultivation.
What frightened him was not the memories themselves. Before the emotions returned, he could watch Mira and Lyra’s lives from a distance, the way someone reads a book about strangers. That distance was gone now. Now he remembered their deaths as a loss that was his own.
The older Leon had told him there was no need to rush toward another breakthrough, and that more seals would loosen as he advanced. Leon did not know what else lay behind them. Another life, another grief, perhaps something worse than what he had already seen.
He still wanted to cultivate, but every time he imagined drawing essence inward, he imagined that sensation taking hold of him again, and he stopped.
Meanwhile, Thomas kept up his search for any similar incidents or medicines. He had written to two retired army physicians and sat quietly through a dinner with a clan elder, listening to stories of strange sleeps after breakthroughs. He reported this each time, and each time Marcus told him to keep going.
Slowly the house was changing with Leon. Vera set an extra plate for him when he skipped a meal, Marcus asked about his reading instead of his training, Roland also noticed Leon watching through the distance, and Iris’s letters from the academy also arrived time to time.
One night, a few weeks later, Hanna woke on the middle of night as usual, and went to check on Leon. The moonlight was spread across the floor, and Leon was sitting cross legged at the edge of his bed. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was slow and even.
She waited for the air to shift, or for the faint pressure that came when someone gathered essence, but nothing came. He was only sitting there.
Hanna stayed in the doorway for a long time. Then she pulled the door almost shut, and went back to her room without making a sound.
In the morning, Hanna brought his snacks, setting the tray on the desk as usual.
"Stay a moment," Leon said when she turned to stand at the side. "I can’t read this part, read with me."
She frowned, looking at the page. "I’m not sure I can either, young master." But she leaned closer, and they spent an hour guessing at it together. By the end Hanna was laughing at their own guesses, and he was smiling too.
One evening at dinner, Vera mentioned Iris’s latest letter, and Marcus and Roland laughed at something in it. Then Marcus noticed how he was holding his knife and reached over to adjust his grip.
"Grip gently, and let the hand do the work."
Leon froze. He had said almost those same words to Lyra once, while she struggled with the movement of her staff. The emotions came sharply, but he stayed where he was and let it pass.
"Like this?"
"Better," Marcus said.
A few days later, Roland dragged him down to the stream with two fishing rods. "No lightning, no lessons."
They caught nothing in two hours, and Roland teased him about his spot, and Leon teased him back about his old fishing rod.
Thomas reported to Marcus that week. The physicians still had no explanation and no comparable case. The only oddity was Leon’s latest check, which found his body sturdier than a boy’s should be after months without training. Marcus frowned at that, but only said, "Keep looking, and keep it quiet."
The months passed. The memories still came, if he witnessed a similar scene or felt something similar, but he learned to carry on with whatever he was doing. He stopped catching the colds when seasons changed. One morning a cup cracked in his hand, when he was using his regular grip.
It took him a long time to put it together.
’I had not drawn essence since the breakthrough, yet my body is gradually growing stronger. I think its because of the proper order as Body, Energy, Elements, Soul, that I read in the library.’
The breakthrough had pushed his soul far ahead of a body that had never circulated essence, and the older Leon also called it stronger than expected for his age.
A soul holding more power than the body can carry has to put the excess somewhere. His body, the which was weaker than his soul, seemed to be taking it in a little at a time and reinforcing itself, with no circulation and no technique.
It meant his body was changing without his choosing. He wasn’t ready for another unexpected breakthrough, and he didn’t know what was behind the next memories.
He knew he could not avoid his progress always, and eventually have to return to cultivation and the things he had once enjoyed, but he wasn’t ready for them yet. So for now, he chose to let his days continue as they were.