Chương 56: Sealed In

For a long time, Zayn did not know whether he was alive. It was not a philosophical question. It was a practical problem. His body was no longer sending separate pains, clear and easy to sort. There was no longer the shoulder, the side, the thigh, the palm, the ribs. Everything had fused into a single piece of information: bad shape. He opened his eyes. Dark. He closed them again. Dark too. Conclusion: zero visual improvement. He inhaled. Pain exploded along his left side. Very good.

Breathing possible, but sponsored by suffering. He tried to move his leg. A white spike shot from his ankle to his skull. Not broken. Maybe. Or broken in a way polite enough not to immediately leave his body.

"Excellent," he breathed.

"Even my bones are hesitating to commit clearly." His voice was rough. Too low. But it existed. So he probably did too. He stayed lying there for several more minutes, listening to the silence. Real silence. Not the silence of the upper galleries, full of scratching, voices, filaments, stolen breathing. Here, nothing. No Weaver. No knocks in the walls. No false Lena. No false Elias. No dead whispering through cracks. Nothing. It was almost worse. Because silence gave no information.

Zayn slowly raised a hand in front of his face. He could not see it. He only felt his fingers trembling. His dagger? He searched around himself, first with his right hand, then the other. Stone. Dust. A piece of metal. Nothing. He forced his body upright. A violent wave of nausea rose into his throat. He fought it, lost, and threw up almost nothing. Bile. Old water. The taste of blood. When it was over, he stayed on all fours, head lowered, breathing like a sick animal. His soul strength was 42. He knew it.

He could feel it, even. That new density, stolen from the Weaver, was holding something together. Without it, maybe his body would have simply decided the day had gone on long enough. But 42 did not create light. 42 did not fix an ankle. 42 did not fill a waterskin. 42 did not turn the bottom of an unknown pit into an inn with a hot meal, baths, and staff trained not to use dead people's voices. Deeply disappointing. At last, his fingers closed on something. The short blade. Not his dagger.

The blade stolen from the Ashes, chipped, filthy, but still usable. He gripped it like a sacred relic. Which said a great deal about how far his spiritual standards had fallen. Then he searched for his satchel. He found it wedged under a stone, the strap almost torn through. He had to pull with all his weight to free it.

Inside: a few broken pieces of chalk, the Ashes plate, bent but readable, the ancient parchment, crumpled, a piece of rope, two crushed black rations, a nearly empty waterskin, a curved blade fragment, not his dagger. Zayn stared at the inventory.

"So the mine stole my best knife." He looked up into the dark.

"Noted. Debt pending." No answer. Good. He took a tiny sip. The last one, or almost. The water was lukewarm now, tasting of damp leather and personal despair. He kept it in his mouth before swallowing, to trick his body for a few more seconds. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Then he tried to stand. Mistake. His ankle almost gave out. He slammed back against the wall with a dull crack and smothered a cry between his teeth. For several seconds, he laughed.

Not because it was funny. Because it was either that or punch the stone until he broke his fingers, and he still needed his fingers to make regrettable choices.

"Very well. Walking limited. Running canceled. Dancing definitively postponed." He tore off a piece of rope, bound his ankle as tightly as he could, used a metal fragment as an improvised splint, then pushed himself upright against the wall. This time, he stayed standing. Barely. The dark stretched ahead of him. He could see nothing, but little by little, he felt the contours. Not with his eyes. With the air. A low space. A slope. A nearby wall to the right. A hollow to the left. No strong draft. No obvious exit.

He reached out with his perception. Values? Nothing. Nothing close. Farther away, very far, a weak presence appeared and vanished. 5 Then nothing. Zayn inhaled slowly. No immediate hunt. Good. No immediate food. Bad. He moved forward. One step. Then another. Each movement of his ankle sent a dull ache up his leg. Each breath pulled at his side. His left hand still trembled after the impact of the fall. The corridor he was in was not a gallery. It was a fissure.

Natural, narrow, slanted, formed by the collapse of the lower chamber or by something older. The stone was sharp. More than once, he had to turn sideways, scraping his shoulders along the walls. Once, he got stuck because of his satchel and nearly lost enough patience to tear it off. He did not. The satchel held everything he still had. Which was profoundly depressing for a personal estate. After some immeasurable length of time, the fissure finally widened. Zayn emerged into a low cavity. Not large.

But enough to sit. He collapsed against a wall, took short breaths, then pulled out the chalk. His fingers slipped. He had to try three times before he managed to draw a mark. A real one. With the deliberate flaw. Then he wrote underneath: Day? He stared at the word. He no longer knew. Third day? Fourth? Still the third? The fall had broken everything. The Weaver was dead. The voices were gone. The landmarks too. He added: Do not rely on time. Then, after a pause: Count the water. He shook the waterskin.

Almost nothing. He put it away. The hunger returned. Not like before. Before, it bit. Now, it weighed. It had settled beneath his ribs, behind his eyes, in his fingers. It slowed his thoughts and then suddenly made them race too fast. It turned every smell into a question. Every imagined body into a possibility. Every ration into a conflict. He took out a piece of black ration. Looked at it. Eat now? Save it? Eat a quarter? Half? All of it? He raised it to his mouth. Stopped. Set it down. Picked it back up.

Set it down again. Then he let out a short, dry laugh.

"Congratulations. You have just been strategically dominated by a moldy biscuit." He broke off a tiny piece and chewed very slowly. Very slowly. His stomach clenched, but did not immediately reject it. Improvement. Or surrender. The two looked much alike. Then he fell asleep without meaning to. Not for long. Or for a very long time. He woke with the sensation that someone had spoken near his ear. He raised the blade in a flash. Nothing. No value. No voice. Just a drop falling somewhere in the dark. A drop.

Zayn straightened at once. Water. He listened. A drop. Then another. Far off. To the left. He got up too fast, nearly fell, caught himself on the wall, and limped toward the sound. The walk took an eternity. The drop seemed to move. Sometimes close, sometimes far, drowned out by his own breathing. Twice, he thought he had lost it. Once, he followed a false echo and found only a dry wall. He almost hit the stone. Then stopped himself. Conserve strength. Conserve anger. Even anger was becoming a resource.

At last, he found the source. Not a river. Not even a trickle. A crack in the ceiling, where water fell drop by drop into a shallow depression in the stone. Zayn stood beneath it as if before a miracle run by a miser. The pool held barely a few spoonfuls. He knelt, checked the smell, touched a finger to it, waited, then drank. The water was cold. Dirty. Magnificent. He set the waterskin beneath the crack and sat beside it. Drop. Drop. Drop. The sound became his whole world. He wanted to sleep.

But if he slept, something could come. If he did not sleep, his mind would go on tearing itself apart from exhaustion. Compromise: he stayed awake while mildly delirious. Which had perhaps become his normal administrative state. He spoke to the waterskin.

"Work faster." Drop.

"I'm warning you, if you keep this pace, I nationalize the source." Drop.

"Yes. Very good. Passive resistance. I recognize the strategy." He laughed. Then stopped. The laugh had sounded too high. Too alone. He rubbed his face. His fingers came away filthy, trembling, thinner than before. He tried to remember Lena's face precisely. He managed it. Then the face slipped, replaced by the Weaver speaking in her voice. He opened his eyes. No. Not that. The Weaver was dead. The voices too. At least those ones. No need to keep making them himself.

He pressed the back of his head against the stone and murmured:"Elias would have found some very noble way to make this situation unbearable." Silence.

"He would probably have given his last mouthful of water to someone." Silence.

"Idiot." The word fell. But it did not have its usual taste. Not enough venom. Only fatigue. Then he thought of Maelor. 312. Even in the dark, the number was luminous. Impossible. Enormous. A summit. Zayn looked down at his hands. 42. He had killed the Weaver. Survived the Ashes. Broken a chamber of voices. And he was still stuck waiting for a crack to fill a waterskin at the pace of a dead civil servant. Greatness, apparently, had a cruel sense of humor.

When the waterskin was half-full—or rather, less empty in an encouraging way—Zayn started walking again. He followed the direction opposite the fall. Not because he knew where he was going. Because going back toward a collapse was an idea even his current state refused to approve. The fissure descended again in places, then rose sharply, then dropped once more. The ground became more uneven. He had to crawl once beneath a block wedged between two walls. Under it, he got stuck. His shoulder jammed.

So did his satchel. For one second, pure panic surged through him. No voice. No monster. No fight. Just being stuck. There. Between two stones. With a waterskin, a short blade, and soul strength that meant nothing if his chest could no longer expand enough to breathe. He forced himself forward. His shoulder exploded with pain. He forced again. Nothing. His breathing sped up. No. Not like this. Not stuck like some stupid animal in a hole.

He tore the satchel off his shoulder, shoved it ahead of him, emptied the air from his lungs, twisted his torso slightly, felt the stone scrape his skin, and dragged himself forward centimeter by centimeter. When he finally got free, he lay on his stomach, trembling. It took him far too long to get back up. Much too long. He made no joke. Silence would have won. Farther on, the fissure opened into a lower chamber. Zayn stopped at the threshold. Smell. Strong. Fresh. Blood. A value trembled at the center.

17 A dying creature. It lay near a pile of stones, almost cut in half by the fall of a slab. Not a small beast. Not exactly a demon like the Weaver either. A long gray-black body, two short horns, thick hide, split claws, and a rib cage rising in irregular spasms. Alive. Barely. Around it, no other nearby values. Zayn stayed still. His stomach clenched at once. Not just from hunger. From the smell. Warm blood. Open flesh. Death close at hand. He tightened his grip on the short blade. A dying 17. Possible gain.

Low risk. Food? The thought appeared. He pushed it away immediately. No. Not from morality. From lucidity. That body was not human. Not an ordinary beast either. Something in its smell was too acrid, too heavy, almost corrosive in the air. Humans should not touch that kind of flesh, much less put it in their mouths. He thought of the black rations. Of his almost empty waterskin. Of his hunger. Of the sealed grate. Of the fissure behind him. Of his body wearing itself down. The dying creature opened one eye.

A yellow eye, clouded, almost gone. It saw him. Its value trembled. 17 15 It did not have much longer. Zayn took a step. Then stopped. The silence in the chamber was absolute. He raised the blade. Kill first. Think after. Simple. He approached. The creature tried to growl, but produced only a wet breath. Zayn looked at it. No voice. No Weaver. No witness. No Lena. No Elias. Just him, hunger, the blade, and a body that no longer had enough life left to refuse. He plunged the blade into its throat.

The creature went rigid. [Soul strength absorbed: +1] Current soul strength: 43 Zayn pulled the blade back out. Blood spilled across the stone. Black-red. Thick. He took one step back. Then his gaze dropped, despite himself, to the open wound, to the dark muscles beneath the skin, to the heat slowly leaving the body. His stomach twisted. He stayed there. A long time. Too long. The blade hung in his hand. The hunger no longer spoke. It was watching with him. Zayn closed his eyes.

"No," he murmured. But he did not move. Not yet.