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His uncle is dead.
Alex stands before the empty basin that once held the Water of Hermes, staring up at the inert tower of Mercury Lighthouse. This is the place that countless members of the Mercury Clan have guarded for untold centuries, and...
...and it's worthless. Their duty is worthless. Worse than worthless. If only someone would come to break the seal on Alchemy, the sacred waters would flow again, and then maybe the sick could be saved...
What good is a healer who can't heal? If he closes his eyes, he can still see the growths that devoured his uncle from within, the lumps they cut out time and time again to no avail... The disease no healing could help, when the deformities grew back faster than the healthy flesh...
If he thinks about it, he won't be able to stop shaking. In the sleepless nights since his uncle was buried, he's half-fancied that the same disease is eating the whole world. Useful flesh replaced with useless disease, weaklings replacing the strong, the currents of power that make up the foundations of Weyard slowing to a stop, death and decay surrounding him and someday within him --
He wants to scream, but there's nothing to hear him. The goddess whose statue graces Mercury Lighthouse does not respond to mortals' prayers; without Alchemy, perhaps She never could. The great seal was a mistake. If even the remnants of the Mercury Clan cannot save themselves -- what chance do ordinary people have?
And the Mercury Clan is within a hair's breadth of extinction. Mia is training their distant cousins, but they lack both the physical traits of the Clan and much of its strength; in Alex's quiet opinion, with which she has vociferously disagreed, they cannot be said to be true children of Mercury. That said, they have no other choice. The single family that produced Alex's uncle and mother are the last line to truly resemble the Mercury Clan of old. His aunt died of an abrupt aneurysm when Mia was a baby, and his uncle never remarried; now his uncle is dead. As for his own immediate family... his father, an ordinary man, died on a hunting trip soon before he was born; his mother succumbed to the deep despair that befalls some women after childbirth, and threw herself into the sea. So much for the Mercury Clan; now he and Mia are the only ones left.
...Well, his uncle said his mother fell to madness. Looking upon a dead Lighthouse as one of the final members of a dying Clan, Alex has the sickly feeling he understands what must have overtaken his mother in the final days. Those of the Mercury Clan are trained as compassionate physicians, after all. When all hope is lost, and only meaningless, tedious suffering lies ahead...
But there must be hope. There must be. The sacred duty of the Mercury Clan offers a twisted promise that not all is lost, if only...
He bows his head in prayer to a goddess who does not answer, focusing all his heart and mind upon a wish so blasphemous that he dares not move his lips to utter it.
Please, please let someone come to the Lighthouse. Someone who seeks power, someone who is willing to destroy what our Clan has held most dear. Someone who is willing to damn the entire world and break the seal on Alchemy.
And please, please let me join them.