Chương 13: The Return from Below

The corridor to the right descended at first. Then, after about twenty paces, it bent into a slope so shallow it no longer felt like a staircase at all and instead like a very ancient collapse. The walls were narrower there, the joints between the stones more uneven, and the old seals carved into them so worn they looked more like scars than protections. Zayn moved slowly. Not because he wanted to savor any of it. Because he had no choice. Every step woke up his hip.

His injured shoulder pulled each time he moved a little too broadly. His fingers, clenched around the two blades, had already lost that fragile precision that comes after adrenaline. And yet beneath all that exhaustion, there was something new. Not power. Not yet. A margin. Small. Dirty. Real. Fourteen. The number did not stay under his eyes constantly, thankfully. It only appeared when he thought about it or when his attention slipped toward the living shapes around him.

But that possibility alone had already changed the texture of the world. At the edge of a crack, he saw a tiny spark of life crouched behind a block of stone. 1 Not a threat. Carrion. Or something too weak to deserve the word monster. He kept going without slowing. It was almost interesting, in a nauseating way. A few minutes earlier, he probably would have tensed without knowing why at the sight of a moving shadow. Now he knew. He could judge before the danger became real. Measure. Sort. Decide.

Envy had not made him stronger. It had made him worse. The corridor suddenly opened into a gutted side chamber. Its ceiling had partially collapsed long ago, and black roots—not real roots, more like mineral filaments soaked in old mana—hung down between the disjointed blocks. At the center, an old containment basin had been split in two. Thick water still stagnated inside it, greenish and still. And at the edge of that water, three small presences. 2 2 3 Zayn stopped.

The shapes were clearer now that he knew how to look for them. Three drain parasites, as long as gaunt dogs, hairless, with bodies too flat and mouths stretched forward as if someone had tried to make leeches out of bone. They had already sensed him. One of them lifted its head. The reasonable part of his mind said at once: move on. Not worth it. Not necessary. Noise for nothing. Another part answered: +1 is still +1. He stood still one second too long because of that simple thought.

Maybe that was the real difference now, in the end. Before, the idea of killing something for a numerical gain would have felt monstrous in the abstract. Now it was here, within reach, inside his logic, almost inside his breathing. The first parasite leapt. The decision made itself. Zayn pivoted, let the body slide past his left side, and drove the sanctuary dagger into its flank by using its own momentum.

The creature squealed, twisted on the floor, and he finished it with a knife thrust under the neck before it could tear open his leg. The system flashed. [Soul Strength absorbed: +0] His mouth tightened. Of course. The second came almost at the same time. Lower, more cautious. It aimed for his calf. Zayn stepped back, nearly tripped on a loose stone, then threw the old knife he had taken from the warden. Not an elegant throw. Not clean. Enough.

The blade entered the beast's shoulder, knocked it off course, and he crushed it against the rim of the basin with a desperate kick before retrieving his weapon. [Soul Strength absorbed: +1] A faint shiver ran up through his legs. Nothing impressive. Just that damned petty sensation of reinforcement, as if the world were finally giving him back, one drop at a time, what it had handed to others for free. The third parasite hesitated. Zayn saw it. Not with a hunter's eyes.

With the eyes of someone suddenly understanding what fear does to a creature too weak once the balance of power turns. 3 He could leave. Let it go. The parasite stepped back once. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Zayn stepped forward. This time, the choice was conscious. Not immediate survival. Not necessity.

A small living thing stood before him, and part of his mind had just calculated that letting it go was less interesting than killing it. He hated himself even while he did it. The beast tried to flee under the rubble. He caught it with a lateral strike to the rear of the body, then had to stab twice more before it finally stopped thrashing. [Soul Strength absorbed: +1] He remained crouched over the corpse for a few seconds too long. Silence returned to the gutted chamber.

His soul strength rose briefly before his eyes. 16 Sixteen. Two points more. Still far from Jonah. Still far from Lena. Still ridiculous beside Elias. And yet... Sixteen. He did not like the dry satisfaction that came with it. He stood abruptly, as if by moving again he could leave that feeling behind. Bad news: he could not. The next corridor was even older, almost raw in places.

The walls of the human sanctuary blended there with a lower, older architecture, some of whose stones seemed to have been laid long before the Sun of Glass had ever been imagined. Worn symbols, half-eaten by time, still ran in fragments across certain arches. Here, the air changed again. Less damp. More cold metal. More ash. Zayn slowed. A number glimmered far ahead, through two bends in the passage. 6 Not enormous. But mobile.

He held his breath and moved closer until he could finally make it out: a hunched scavenger, closer to a dog than a larva, with a humped back covered in calcified growths. The creature was rooting through a heap of indistinct remains at the foot of a collapsed iron door. It had not noticed him yet. Six. Again, he was not obliged. And again, the thought of gain came before any other. So that's it, he thought. Even when the danger isn't immediate, your first sorting becomes: how much is it worth?

He braced himself against the arch and waited. The scavenger shifted, made a wet chewing sound, then turned slightly. Zayn threw the old knife. This time, the throw was better. Not fatal. But enough to make the beast let out a sharp cry and charge him in the wrong direction: straight into the place where he was waiting. He slashed upward with the sanctuary dagger. The blade skidded across a plate of bone. Bad angle. The impact shot up into his elbow.

The beast slammed into his chest, hurled him against the arch, then came back with its mouth open for his thigh. Zayn shoved his left hand almost blindly into the wound made by the thrown knife to find the handle still buried in its flank. He yanked violently, tearing out metal and flesh together. The scavenger screamed. And in that ugly opening, he drove the second blade up to the hilt beneath its jaw. The body went rigid. Then collapsed. [Soul Strength absorbed: +1] He almost laughed. Not because it was funny.

Because it was exactly the kind of mechanic the world would choose for him. You can take. But badly. Always less cleanly than the others receive. His strength barely rose. 17 Good. Still slow. Very slow. Nothing was going to turn him into a prodigy through corridor scavengers. The road was still long. Terribly long. And that almost suited him. Because a rise that came too quickly would have been easy to hate as some crude cheat. Here, the system was giving him just enough for every gain to be real...

and just little enough that he would have to keep going if he truly wanted to change anything about his place in this world. The worst possible balance. He recovered both blades and kept walking. This time, faster. Not because he had suddenly decided to rejoin the others out of attachment. But because he understood something else now: wandering alone too long in these galleries would drag him even deeper into this miserable logic of accumulation. And that, yes, was a real danger. Not only for his survival.

For the rest. The corridor finally began to rise. At first almost imperceptibly. Then more clearly, until it joined an old service conduit cut more cleanly through the stone. Fresh traces appeared on the floor there: recent claw marks, shifted dust, fragments of seals broken not long ago. The group had passed near here. Not far. A strange satisfaction rose in him. Not exactly relief. More something like the temporary end of too perfect an isolation. Then he stopped.

Very far ahead, through a partially cracked wall, several values appeared at once. 100 80 75 74 The world suddenly narrowed to those four numbers. Zayn barely breathed. Elias. Jonah. Lena. Mira. He could see them. Not them directly, not yet. Their soul strengths. Like stable presences through the stone. The shock was much more violent than he had expected. It was not abstract this time. It was not the memory of the measurement chamber.

They were there, close, and each of their existences weighed with a number the world recognized without hesitation. 100 Elias's number hit him like a slap. Clean. Not because it was high. Because it was clean. Full. Whole. As if the world had never doubted for even a second the quantity of existence he deserved. Zayn remained motionless in the shadows, eyes fixed on those four presences he could almost touch through the stone without yet seeing their faces. A hideous thought crossed his mind at once.

That's what what you're missing looks like. He hated the sentence immediately. Then another, uglier still: And now you can see it everywhere. Beyond the wall, muffled voices finally reached him. Not clearly enough to make out words. But enough to recognize the rhythms. Jonah was speaking faster. Lena higher, tense. Mira probably cutting in with short phrases. And Elias... Elias was probably still holding the center of their exchange the way he held everything else. Zayn closed his eyes briefly.

He could step forward now. Strike the stone. Call out. Reappear. The structure would take him back. The group would reform. And he would immediately become once more the uneven piece returned alive against all probability. Another idea came to him. Wait. Just a little. Wipe away the blood. Hide the mark on his clavicle better. Try to recover a more readable face before returning among them. More calculation. Always calculation. Even here. Even now. Not: they may have been looking for me for hours.

But: how do I come back at the best moment? He let out a breath through his nose, almost disgusted. The Throne read you well, didn't it. The thought came without detour. Not because he was already powerful. Not because he carried some naturally grand demonic aura. But because deep inside him, beneath the layers of shame, frustration, smallness, and envy, there was that thing: his ability to think correctly through the worst the moment it became useful. Not spectacular. Not romantic. Simply bad.

Zayn opened his eyes again. Then he stepped closer to the cracked wall. A line of light filtered between two blocks. And for the first time since his fall, he finally caught sight of the others on the far side of the collapsed conduit. Elias first, of course, a sealing lamp raised in one hand and his spear in the other. Mira examining the opposite wall. Jonah probably still standing guard while complaining.

Lena searching the shadows beyond the cracks as if she refused to abandon the idea that he might appear from somewhere impossible. Zayn stood still one beat too long just looking at them before making any sound. Because that scene, even through stone, summed up exactly what he hated. They existed together. Naturally. And he was coming back from below with a black mark on his clavicle, a soul strength of seventeen, and thoughts he would have preferred never to possess.

At last, he took the hilt of his dagger and struck the cracked stone twice. The sound echoed through the conduit. All four values froze at once. Then Lena's voice came through the wall, strained almost to the breaking point:"Zayn?" He placed one hand against the cold stone. And despite the exhaustion, despite the blood, despite the disgust still clinging to him, despite the newly opened Downfall and everything it had already shifted in the way he saw the world... one thing was certain. He had come back.

But not as he had left.