Rune of Immortality

Jacob didn't sleep. Not a minute. He lay in bed for hours with his eyes open and mind running in frantic loops, twisting over the same questions, the same helpless conclusions. He had made more attempts, tested more runes, tried every plausible variation in the books he'd smuggled and borrowed.

At some point in the dark, he convinced himself briefly that maybe, just maybe, one of the runes he had been testing was a true rune, and the reason no one had discovered it yet was because it had simply never been recognized. But even that flicker of hope was weak and desperate, and it vanished as quickly as it came.

The truth was simple and cruel: if any of those runes were real true runes, they wouldn't be in those books in the first place. No one else would've been able to use them, let alone publish them. Theories wouldn't have spread. They would've been mysteries, locked in silence, forgotten in solitude.

And that meant only one thing: he had nothing. No power. No magic. No potential.

As dawn crept in through the sliver of curtains, casting soft lines of gold across the wooden floor, Jacob sat with his back pressed against the bed frame, his knees drawn tightly to his chest, arms wrapped around them. His head hung low, and his entire body trembled in quiet surrender.

He tried to hold the tears in, he really did, but they came anyway, hot, unrelenting, streaming silently down his cheeks, dripping onto his arms, and soaking the thin fabric of his sleeves. His soft sobs filled the room, small but aching, like they were being torn from somewhere deep inside.

He wanted to be stronger. Smarter. He wanted to be the kind of person who didn't cry over failure, who stood up and tried again, no matter how many times the world pushed them down. But he wasn't. He was just a boy with dreams too big for his body and a curse he didn't understand.

You couldn't blame him. Even if he hadn't been a child, most people would break under the weight of what he was carrying. It wasn't just about failure; it was the shattering of identity. He hadn't believed he was special, he'd never dared to but he thought, hoped, that through persistence he might become something. A scholar, a theorist, a mage who wielded truth through runes. But now it felt like that future had slipped right through his fingers. And he couldn't reach for it anymore.

"I'm nothing," he whispered to himself, voice hoarse, lips dry. "I'm worse than useless."

A rustle came from across the room. Arthur stirred, yawning as he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the casual clumsiness of someone waking into a world they assumed was still ordinary.

"Hey," he muttered, stretching. "What's all the noise—?"

He stopped mid-sentence.

His eyes locked onto Jacob, crumpled on the floor like something discarded, sobbing quietly into his knees, his glasses sliding down his nose, barely clinging on. His cheeks were streaked with tears, his breathing uneven.

Arthur's body tensed, and in an instant, he was out of bed and kneeling beside him.

"Jacob, hey, what happened? What's wrong?" His voice was gentle, but laced with fear.

Jacob didn't answer right away. He turned, just slightly, and met Arthur's gaze. His eyes were red and swollen, his expression blank but somehow heavy with everything he wasn't saying.

"You can't help," he said quietly, his voice empty. "No one can. I'm useless. I'm cursed. No... I am the curse."

Arthur flinched. "Don't say that. You're not useless. You're not cursed. Something bad might've happened, sure, but we can work through it. You have people, me, everyone—"

Jacob cut him off, eyes narrowing with something unreadable. "You say that... but you don't know. You don't know."

Arthur frowned. "Know what?"

"I killed my brother."

The words hung in the air, thick and cold.

Jacob didn't cry anymore. He just stared at the floor, voice flat.

"I don't know how. But I know it was me. I see it, over and over again in dreams I can't remember when I wake up, I may not remember how, but in my heart, I know I did it. For the last two years, I've lived with this pit in my stomach, this... this guilt that never fades. It's always there. It eats me. The only thing that kept me standing was ambition. The idea that I could do something with all this pain. That I could make it worth something. But now even that's gone. It's gone."

He stood up slowly, legs shaking, shoulders stiff. He didn't look at Arthur as he moved toward the door, hand trembling as he reached for the handle.

"I hurt Castor too," he said quietly. "He almost died. Samuel almost killed him because of me. Because of me. People get hurt when they're close to me. So, tell me Arthur, if that's not a curse, then what is?"

Stolen story; please report.

He opened the door and stepped through it, slamming it shut behind him with more force than he meant to. His heart was pounding, his face numb, his limbs hollow.

As he walked through the hallway, he spotted Belemir in the distance. The older attendant stood silently, eyes filled with concern and something heavier, something that looked almost like grief. But he didn't say a word. Jacob didn't want him to. Silence was kinder.

Jacob moved through the hall with slow, mechanical steps, his shoulders hunched slightly forward as though the weight of his own thoughts had grown too heavy to carry upright. Ever since the testing, he'd been required to attend breakfast each morning, one of Jeremiah's newly imposed rules, likely meant to foster unity or some vague sense of normalcy but Jacob found the entire ritual unbearable.

Still, he obeyed, if only out of inertia. He stepped into the dining room without a word, his gaze sweeping across the long table crowded with half-awake siblings and steaming platters of food. No one said anything at first, but the change in atmosphere was immediate.

He didn't need to cry or collapse or scream for them to sense it. There was something wrong, deeply, fundamentally wrong and it showed in the rigid way he walked, the distant look in his eyes, and the way he didn't even glance at the food as he slid quietly into the chair beside Henry.

He sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and stared ahead like he wasn't really there. His plate remained untouched. He didn't even pretend to be interested in eating.

Henry, sitting beside him with that usual easy confidence that made people feel safe, turned slightly and offered a smile, not a wide or cheerful one, just enough to show he cared. "Hey, Jacob," he said softly, leaning in a little so his voice wouldn't carry too far. "If something's bothering you, you can talk to us, you know that, right?"

Across the table, a few of the others looked up from their meals. Their expressions varied, concern, curiosity, quiet attentiveness but they all gave small nods of agreement, even Arthur, who had just slipped into his seat moments earlier.

But Jacob didn't answer. Not at first.

He slowly turned his head to look at Henry, and in that moment, something bitter began to burn in his chest. He took in the smile, the sculpted features, the strong frame of a brother who had always seemed to glide through life with ease, always admired, always respected, always sure of himself.

Then his eyes drifted across the rest of the table. Arthur, strong and observant. Jeremiah, stoic but always decisive. Even the other siblings had some spark, some talent or charisma or effortless charm that made them fit perfectly into this family of overachievers.

It wasn't just admiration he felt toward them. It was distance. A canyon that had only widened over the years. He saw their confident postures, their clean clothes and composed faces, and then, involuntarily, he thought of himself. Scrawny. Awkward. Unremarkable. A face that blended into crowds, a voice that cracked at the worst moments, a body that had never quite grown into its limbs.

He was surrounded by brilliance, and he was nothing but a dim shadow at their feet.

The worst part was that he'd always known this, even before Lucas died. He had felt like the odd one out for years, like a stranger living in someone else's home. The others had always been outgoing, natural-born leaders who made friends easily, who knew how to talk, how to laugh, how to carry themselves in a room.

Jacob, on the other hand, had studied people the way scholars studied runes, curiously, cautiously, always from a distance. He had watched the popular people around him, tried to mimic the way they joked or moved or smiled, but nothing ever felt real. His entire personality back then had been a carefully rehearsed performance.

Now, it had all collapsed. That fake confidence, the fragile optimism, the belief that if he just worked hard enough, he'd eventually belong, it had all died with Lucas. What remained was this: guilt, shame, and an all-consuming hatred for what he saw when he looked in the mirror.

Why am I the only one like this?

The question repeated in his mind like a drumbeat, echoing louder with every passing second. Why was I the broken one? Why was I born wrong?

He didn't realize how tightly he was clenching his jaw until he felt the taste of blood in his mouth. His teeth had bitten into the inside of his cheek, and a slow trickle had begun to seep out. He still didn't speak.

Henry looked at him again, more closely this time, and his tone shifted from casual concern to genuine alarm. "Jacob… what's going on? You're worrying me."

Jacob inhaled slowly. He felt something inside him unravel, but instead of an explosion, it came with a strange and terrifying calm. A dull numbness washed over him, like the moment after a deep wound when the body stops hurting and starts preparing for collapse.

He stood up suddenly, his chair scraping loudly against the polished wood floor. All eyes turned to him. He didn't flinch.

Turning to face Jeremiah, his voice came out steady, but completely void of emotion. "I won't be joining you all for breakfast anymore," he said. "I don't belong here. I'm just getting in the way. I don't need your money or your food. I don't need protection, or attention, or whatever else you think I'm here for."

Jeremiah raised an eyebrow, but his voice remained even. "Jacob. Sit down."

Jacob shook his head, slowly. "No. I shouldn't have been here to begin with. I'm an eyesore. I'm the mistake in the picture, the smudge on the glass. I've always known it."

There was a stunned silence. Some of the siblings looked at one another, unsure whether they should speak or stay quiet. Arthur opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it.

Then, Jeremiah rose from his chair, his expression harder now. "If you leave this table, Jacob," he said, "I really will give up on you. No second chances."

The others turned, surprised at the intensity in his voice. Even Henry looked uncertain, unsure whether Jeremiah's words were meant as a warning or a challenge.

They all expected Jacob to stop. To turn around, to apologize, to ask for another chance like he always had when he was younger, when he still believed he could fix things. But instead, he turned back, just briefly, and there was something almost peaceful in his expression. His eyes weren't full of anger or panic. If anything, he looked… relieved.

"Good," he said, and his voice carried clearly across the table. "That's for the best. A useless curse like me doesn't deserve to sit with people like you."

Without waiting for a response, Jacob turned and walked out of the dining room, his footsteps steady but not hurried, like someone finally leaving a place they were never meant to be. No one moved to follow him. No one knew what to say.

The room was left in complete silence. Dishes remained untouched, forks frozen halfway to mouths. Arthur looked down at the table, fists clenched beneath it. Henry stared at the empty seat beside him. Even Jeremiah didn't speak again.

Because if they had heard him right, if they had really understood what Jacob had just said, then that meant he wasn't just giving up on breakfast. He was giving up on all of it. The family. The house. The place he held at the table.

And none of them had the faintest idea why it had come to this.