His vision was blurry, even in the dark nothingness of the cave, and he heaved as if his lungs were that of a two-year-old’s, too small to ever satisfy his breaths.
But it wasn’t over.
The formation humd, and the severance trait of the wind aether tore apart, his limbs regaining their life and vitality.
WHOOOOOOSH!
"AHHH!"
His natal aether sped across his body so fast that the sweat, blood, and tears on his flesh began to turn into fog, filling the shelter.
The heat was so high that the frigid trait of the ice aether was destroyed just as quickly as the wind aether’s.
WHOOOSH!
The dark shelter was boiling hot, stinking of tal and sweat.
’I–I...did it!’
He’d lived, again.
He could feel his mind sinking into darkness, his body relaxing, and his heartbeat weakening.
’I have to keep going! I have to keep going! I have to...’
As he repeated those words in his mind, again and again, he swallowed hard and, while trembling, reached forward.
His abode mark flashed, and his dagger faded, replaced by a thick needle already attached to a string.
With trembling, shaky, blood-slick fingers, he lowered the needle, then—
TOH!
—punctured his skin, the sound akin to leather tearing and glass shattering as he pierced through his shells, slowly stitching his limbs back together.
Simultaneously, his mind pushed itself, reaching yet another limit as a vine erged from the tight walls around him, dipping into the blood soaking him and using it as ink to draw dozens more formations alongside his stitching.
His consciousness worked across two planes, stitching himself whole while drawing formations to nd and heal the wounds, all while preventing his heart from stopping.
’I...keep going...!’
...
Unlike most, Uriel was extrely familiar with delirium, with extre amounts of pain, and with hostile surroundings.
He’d spent years blind and unable to properly breathe, after all.
After he finished stitching his leg, he moved to his arm, which proved far more difficult due to just how little space he had.
But he did it nonetheless.
From his abode mark, he summoned dozens of thick fabric strips that he tightly wrapped around his leg, using a couple of vines to fortify it and act as a crude prosthetic.
He used the remaining fabric to bind his arm tightly to his chest.
Though he had passed the hurdle, both his leg and arm would remain useless for quite so ti.
Across both limbs, an innurable amount of formations were drawn—augntation formations, analysis formations that constantly monitored his condition, pain-dulling formations, and many more.
’...’
Uriel sat leaning against a wall of vines behind him, the space barely wide enough for him to fully extend his legs or even sit up straight.
Hunched over, sweating seas of salt and burning beyond belief, he finally took a mont to breathe.
His expression was neutral, his gaze empty.
It was dark, so all he looked at was an abyss of nothing, yet amidst the sombreness he drowned in, he could see a faint golden glow.
He knew it was illusory, yet he saw it nonetheless.
His right hand moved to caress his chest, tracing his runic scar, and he softly smiled, his gaze regaining a fragnt of its spark.
’Yeah, we made it, buddy. Thanks to you.’
He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled.
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
Above, the apocalypse continued without end, rocking his shelter without respite.
He had about half an hour left before his deadline.
Half an hour before the flas of hell were lit once more, and the cackles of the reapers returned to haunt his mind.
Half an hour.
He closed his eyes, his breaths shaky and on the verge of hyperventilation, yet steady to a certain degree.
He swallowed repeatedly, feeling a lump stuck in his throat and his heart beating so hard his entire body trembled.
’So this is what I dreamt of.’
He rembered his days in prison.
There, bound and shackled, tortured and beaten every day for the horrors he’d committed during the Blood-Heaven Massacre, he’d only been allowed to dream.
That was the only thing none could take away from him.
He dreamt of heroes who bore his face, travelling across endless worlds, valiantly fighting the evils of existence, discovering unknown legacies and unveiling era-defining mysteries.
He rembered their magnificent abilities, their years of relentless training and effort, their failures, their losses, and everything else.
It had been his only escape and the only light he’d been able to cling to so as not to go mad. The only sliver of morality he could hold onto so he wouldn’t begin hating the world and all that lived within it.
When the guards ca, with whips as hot as the sun and blades as sharp as the horizon, he’d been thinking about his heroes.
When they were captured by the enemy and tortured for years, they never yielded or began to hate the world—only themselves—so why should he?
When he was starved and forced to beg for weeks on end, he thought of the heroes.
Even further back, when his grandmother tore him apart, all he’d been thinking about were the heroes.
’...’
But for so reason, Uriel couldn’t help but remain neutral this ti.
’Makes you wonder if all this suffering is ever really going to be worth it... especially considering this is only the beginning...’
He smiled faintly.
’It’s unfortunate I haven’t beco the hero I once envisioned. It would’ve been nice to have a heart of steel, a cool long sword, and a flaming steed... that’d be nice.’
His smile turned hollow.
’Maybe if I had my mories, it would’ve all been solved already. I’d have Thoryl’s head on a pike, and I wouldn’t have been forced to whore myself to Godwyn.’
’Or maybe nothing would’ve changed. It’d be funny if misery was guaranteed regardless.’
His thoughts paused, silence echoing across both his soul and the world, the two harmonising as his simring heart gradually cald.
’I wonder if I had kids.’
The thought made his lips tremble.
’Maybe a wife and a house. A family.’
He slowly opened his eyes.
’Having purpose and a aning to life would be kind to have as well.’
His hollow smile parted, and he let out a hoarse chuckle, teetering between a cry of agony and a laugh of desperation.
’Well, I’ll never know.’
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