Why? 6 (Flashback)

Alex sat stiffly before the console, his fingers curled into trembling fists against his knees. His mother's voice—soft yet heavy with the weight of the past—continued to spill from the speakers, weaving together the truth. 

"It took your father two months to regain consciousness, Alex," she said, her tone carrying the quiet pain of someone who had lived through every agonizing second. "Even after all that time, he was only forty percent healed." 

Alex's breath came out unsteady. He could still remember that time—those endless, suffocating weeks of silence. 

His father had vanished without a trace. 

No one spoke of it. No one answered his questions. Warriors of the clan carried on their duties with forced normalcy, but the tension was palpable, a lingering unease in every whispered conversation, in every stolen glance between elders.