The next morning Maleek had an arberdir go inform Martha that Kain had woken up and was in good health. She, as anything mother would, rushed over immediately. Frantically running through the halls of the Fortem’s home, she reached their guest room. Throwing the door open, she saw her son, awake. She saw him sitting on the bed, but she didn’t enter. She just stared at him. He stood up from the bed and smiled at her.

“Hi mom.”

She practically jumped on him. Clutching him in a bear hug, she ignored everything else around her. There were voices all around her, but she couldn’t hear any of them. She wept. When she saw him turn red, she was too confused to understand what was going on. It felt like her mind was playing tricks on her. The mayhem that followed made her lose track of him, when she got out of the barn, there were tens of bodies around. It horrified her. After looking around for awhile, she finally found her son. He was laying by a malsir, unconscious.

In the days that followed she would learn that the malsir was the Maleek Fortem, her son was more than just unconscious, and all the dead bodies she saw were caused by him. It was a lot to take in, too much to take in. Sandra and Mark made her stay with them under the guise of treating her ankle, but it was really to watch her mental health. Martha wasn’t just concerned with her son’s health, she was concerned he was not the person she knew. The kind, gentle boy she had raised. Only a monster would have been able to kill so many people. Her son was no monster.

He wasn’t.

She told herself that constantly, but it never soothed the fears. The fact he wasn’t waking up only worsened them. She tried her best not to show it, but she was afraid. Her son was her everything, she couldn’t imagine losing him. She couldn’t afford to. She had lost everything once, she couldn’t do it a second time. She could not.

When she finally saw him awake she was anxious, fearful. She didn’t know what would happen, she didn’t know what she should say, she didn’t know what he would say.

In the end, she did nothing. His warm smile was all it took to lift her fear. A simple ‘hi mom’ was all it took to stop her anxiety. In the end he was still her kind, gentle son. He was still Kain.