Hours had passed.
He didn't know how many anymore. Time had become a cruel blur, something that throbbed and convulsed alongside the pain in his chest. He sat hunched, back against the cold stone wall, fingers trembling as they clutched the center of his sternum. Sweat poured from his scalp like a broken faucet, soaking his shirt, running down his face, stinging his eyes, and yet he didn't move. He couldn't. It felt like any shift in posture would snap whatever fragile thread of consciousness he still clung to.
His breathing was ragged. His lips were dry. His butt hurt.
Gods, his butt really hurt.
How long had he been sitting here? Two hours? Ten? A week? It didn't matter. His Butt felt like it had been flattened into a loaf of stale bread—bruised, sore, and somehow morally offended.
But that wasn't the problem.
The real problem was inside him.
For hours—no, Days—he had been locked in a silent war, one not of blade or fist, but of pure will. Within him, the last of his own ether—the life-sustaining, soul-linked energy every practitioner possessed—was under siege by something vile. Corrupted ether. A miasmic tide of poisonous particles. It wasn't just foreign—it was malevolent. Sticky, toxic, and stubborn as sin.
The stuff clung to his own ether like mold on bread, eating away at it, corrupting it, assimilating it into its rotting fold. He had tried to expel it, to force it out through sheer will, but it refused to budge. There was no way to exorcise it—not without EMR, Etheric Molecular Reversal, a complicated process that required specialized tools and medics. Neither of which were available. Not here. Not in this cave. Not in this gods-forsaken pit where even the walls seemed to sweat.
He had fought it tooth and nail, defending what remained of his ether like a knight holding a crumbling castle. But now... he was tired. His limbs trembled, his vision swam, and even blinking felt like a gamble.
Then just when despair was curling around his heart—he saw it.
A light particle.
Tiny. Barely there. But unmistakable.
Then another.
And another.
They drifted through the air and passed through his battered body like feathers on the wind. Only... they didn't pass through. They stuck. Clung to him. Meshed into him like puzzle pieces sliding into place.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
"This is how ether regenerates... huh."
He'd never seen it up close like this before. Not in a moment so quiet, so private. It was strangely beautiful—like watching fireflies settle in a dying forest.
But it wasn't enough.
The dark ether was still there. Still biting. Still eating. It wasn't a tsunami anymore, though. More like a steady, insistent wave. Less chaos, more hunger. He could bear it, but only barely.
Then an idea slipped into his head. Dangerous. Reckless. Stupid.
But desperate people did stupid things.
What if... he thought, I don't reject it? What if I try to use it? Fuse it with my own ether somehow?
It sounded insane. It probably was insane. His father would've smacked the back of his head for even thinking it. But no one else was here. And, frankly, his father wasn't the one with a corrupted soul and an increasingly sore ass.
So he calmed himself—or tried to.
He inhaled shakily, then exhaled. Tried to guide his ether like water in a riverbed, threading it slowly, carefully through his veins. It was like trying to knit silk with bloody fingers. Each time his energy brushed the poisoned ether, pain shot through him—sharp and cold, like jagged glass on fire. His back arched involuntarily. A pained grunt escaped him.
"Ah gods... my spleen," he muttered, even though he wasn't entirely sure where the spleen was.
He pushed through it. Again. Again. Sweat pooled beneath him. His fingers twitched. His whole body trembled like a violin string on the verge of snapping.
He shifted.
Bad idea.
His backside flared in pain, and he let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a whimper.
"I swear... if I survive this, I'm investing in a chair."
Still, the ether responded. It moved. Not fast, not willingly, but it moved. He could feel the poisoned particles being slowly nudged, pulled, enticed by the motion of his own. He wasn't purifying them—he wasn't nearly that skilled—but he was... blending them. Diluting the rot. Giving it shape. Giving it purpose.
It hurt like hell.
But it worked.
Sort of.
The process was slow. Agonizing. And not without cost. Every attempt to fuse the particles shaved a little more off his consciousness. His eyelids drooped. He swayed. His mind wandered.
Why the hell am I even doing this...?
The question came unbidden. Bitter. Exhausted. Honest.
He could've just circulated his ether slowly. Kept the corrupted stuff contained, buried. Delayed the rot. Sure, he would've died eventually—but in a more poetic, slow-burning way. Like a tragic hero. A noble sacrifice.
Instead, here he was. Sore, sweaty, delirious, and possibly hallucinating.
But he remembered why.
A promise.
One he had made years ago, with tears on his cheeks and pride in his chest.
A promise to the man who had shaped his life—the most respected person he had ever known.
His father.
Keep them safe, he had said. All of them. Even the ones you don't like. Especially the ones you don't like.
That was the deal.
That was the vow.
And he wasn't going to break it. Not now. Not ever.
He bit his lip, braced himself, and went back in—deeper this time. Reaching for that tangled mass of foreign ether and his own exhausted soul-stuff. He poured everything he had into the mix. The fusion burned. His chest spasmed. He might've thrown up a little in his mouth. But it worked. The particles swirled. Swirled and merged.
Pain flashed again—sharp, searing, radiant—and he screamed.
It echoed through the cave like the cry of something ancient and dying. But when it was over... the pressure eased.
His breath hitched.
The wave inside him… had receded.
And for the first time in hours, he felt something that wasn't pain.
It was small. Faint. But it was there.
Realization.
Then, as if on cue, his stomach growled so loud it startled him.
"Right," he rasped. "Ether fusion burns calories... of course it does."
He leaned back, half-laughing, half-crying, legs twitching like overcooked noodles.
His butt still hurt.
He stepped out into the night, his breath steaming in the chill as the chamber door groaned closed behind him. The air was still, the moon a pale shard of bone in a glassy sky. Shadows stretched across the jagged terrain like watchful specters, but he didn't hesitate.
With a grunt, he unfurled his wings—leathery, batlike things of sinew and bone. They cracked as they opened, joints stiff from disuse, membranes trembling slightly in the wind. Pain lanced through his shoulders, but he gritted his teeth and leapt.
The wind swallowed him whole.
He cut through the air in silence, his form a shadow against a sea of stars. The glassy night sky wrapped around him like an old friend—cold, comforting, vast. He wasn't healed. Not really. His veins still felt like they were lined with burning wire, and the stitched-together ether inside him was barely holding. But none of that mattered.
The mission came first.
His eyes locked on movement below—something big, something ugly, slithering near the ridge.
A mutant.
He tucked his wings and dove.
The wind screamed past his ears. The ground surged closer. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade, the edge already humming with the ether he barely had to spare.
Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.
He struck like a thunderbolt.
His blade drove down through the monster's shoulder and deep into its chest, splitting bone and muscle in a wet, horrible crunch. The creature roared in agony, legs flailing as it collapsed in a heap of steaming gore.
Blood sprayed across his chest.
He stood, panting, wings flared as he watched it twitch and die.
No time for mercy.
He planted a hand against the monster's body and forced himself to absorb its ether. The moment it entered him, his nerves ignited. His knees buckled.
"Gah—!"
It felt like swallowing acid through his skin. The monster's ether was raw, unruly, barely compatible with his own—it lashed and coiled inside him like a caged beast, fighting every inch of the way. He bit down hard on his lip, jaw trembling.
This wasn't natural. He wasn't supposed to take in something like this.
But he did.
Because he had to.
His legs shook as he hefted the creature—twice his size and slick with its own blood—and began the slow, grueling ascent back to the chamber. Every step was a test. The monster felt heavier with each breath. His arms screamed. His vision swam. The corrupted ether writhed inside him like it wanted to tear out.
Am I getting weaker... or is this thing just heavier?
Probably both.
He stumbled, nearly dropped the corpse.
"No," he growled, breath ragged. "Not yet."
He forced himself forward, wings dragging behind him, boots scraping rock, each movement powered by pure will. The wind howled around the cliffs, but he didn't stop.
There was still one more step left.
And he was going to see it through.
Even if it killed him....Actually had hope it wouldn't kill him.