He sat back down, the last remnants of his meal still heavy in his stomach. The fire crackled softly beside him, casting flickering shadows against the cold stone of the cave walls. His hands trembled slightly, not from hunger, but from something far more insidious.
The poison.
It was still there...quiet, patient, gnawing at him from the inside out. A foreign ether, thick and venomous, coursed through his veins like a silent predator. He could feel it: a cold heat, if such a thing existed, weaving itself deeper into his core.
It was going to devour him whole.
His breath hitched. Not now. Not like this.
He clenched his fists, veins twitching under his skin, and forced himself to stay calm. He had to think. He needed a plan. Something, anything to survive this. Panic wouldn't save him. Logic might.
So he closed his eyes, steadying his breathing as he leaned back against the rock wall. The coolness bit into his back, grounding him. He let his mind go blank for a moment—then forced it to race.
Brainstorm.
That's what Xin had always does. When in doubt, break the pattern. When overwhelmed, build your own path. Xin's words echoed in his memory like a mantra. So he started pulling at every thread of knowledge he had about ether.
The poisonous ether—this red and white volatile stream—was eating through his own, neutral ether. His inner energy was dissolving like sugar in acid. That was the root of the problem. But what if…
He sat up straight, eyes narrowing.
What if he mixed them?
Not combined, no. He knew they couldn't truly fuse. The two kinds of ether rejected each other on a basic, elemental level. Like oil and water, they refused to become one. His normal ether and the foreign one simply orbited each other in chaos, never truly blending, always colliding.
But something surfaced in his memory. A lesson from Xin. A metaphor during one of their late-night talks.
"Oil and water don't mix," Xin had said, "unless you add a third thing—like egg yolk. It binds them. Makes them coexist. Not perfectly, but good enough to make mayonnaise."
He had laughed at the time, but now, that stupid cooking metaphor might just save his life.
He needed his own egg yolk.
So he dove inward.
He felt the rush of foreign ether—crimson with streaks of stark white—storming through his system like a violent river. His breath hitched as he guided it into his center, gritting his teeth through the pain. He descended further into himself, peeling back mental layers until he saw it.
Three distinct energies:
One, a red-white churning foreign energy, alive and writhing like a wounded beast.
Two, a pitch-black stream, dense and still, heavy like obsidian ink. The poison.
Three...his own ether. Pale blue, steady, the calm in the chaos. Flickering faintly, but alive.
He reached out with his will, summoning all three. The effort made his stomach churn, the ether pulling on every nerve like a thousand threads of fire. But he endured.
He spun them.
He imagined a great circular motion, like a spiral or a cyclone. He became the center of it. His body shook with the effort. Blood dribbled from his nose and ears, and more than once, he collapsed in agony, vomiting on the ground. Sometimes it was food. Sometimes blood.
But he didn't stop.
He hunted more monsters, his steps dragging, legs barely moving. He fought with trembling hands and shallow breaths, absorbing more and more of the foreign ether each time. It made his skin crawl. It made his eyes burn.
He couldn't sleep. Not with the storm inside him.
For three days and nights, he labored.
His skin began to sink against his bones, pale and tight. His body looked half-dead, a breathing corpse clinging to life with nothing but sheer will.
But he kept going.
He stirred it like cereal.
That's how he thought of it—childishly, absurdly. Like cereal floating in milk. The different pieces never truly blending but sitting together in a single bowl. It didn't matter if they didn't merge. As long as they stayed together. As long as they didn't kill each other.
Or him.
Eventually, he felt a change. Not a grand moment, not a blinding burst of clarity—but a shift.
The ether didn't mix, no. But it stopped repelling each other. It stopped fighting. They sat together—dense, foreign, and dangerous—but stable.
Kind of like cookie dough ice cream, he thought madly.
Chunks of something alien embedded in something sweet and familiar. Uneasy harmony.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't safe. But it worked.
When he finally emerged from the cave, his body was battered, bones aching, hair clumped and dull. His vision was blurred, and his hands shook when he tried to stand fully.
But he smiled. Just a little.
Part one was complete.
The poison hadn't been cleansed.
But it had been bound.
Stuck to his ether. Stuck to him.
And that was enough.
He looked up at the cloudy sky. The world felt heavier now. His soul felt heavier. Like he had anchored something ancient and venomous to himself, like tying a stormcloud to your chest and daring it to burst.
But there was power in it too. A dangerous kind of strength. The kind that came with sacrifice.
He whispered to himself, barely a breath.
"I did it."
He lay on his back for a long moment, the ceiling above him little more than a blur through his weary vision. Every muscle ached, his skin clung to his bones like wax paper, and the remnants of blood still crusted the corners of his lips. His breath came in shallow gasps, but it was steady. That mattered.
Eventually, he rolled to his side and forced himself up. His limbs trembled, his stomach protesting every movement, but he managed to stand. He chewed a few dried rations—flavorless and hard as stone—swallowing them with a grimace. Each bite felt like sand scraping his throat, but it gave him what he needed.
Fuel.
He wiped his mouth and turned his gaze back toward the passage.
There was more to do.
He retraced his steps, slow but determined, past the shattered fire pit, past the cold stone archway that marked the edge of his camp. The air grew still around him, pressing in like a heavy fog. His footsteps echoed faintly in the hollow silence.
He pushed through the cracked wooden door, entering once more into the library. The dusty shelves greeted him with their eternal silence, books slumbering in decay. He glanced at the tomes briefly—titles in forgotten tongues, pages curled with time—but didn't linger. He knew this place now. Every creak in the floor. Every breathless corridor.
He passed through it with purpose.
Into the training hall.
The space opened wide, silent and grim, lit faintly by the glowing crystals embedded in the walls. The same smell of sweat, steel, and age clung to the air. And there he was again—the statue of the General.
Tall. Cloaked in armor. One hand on his sword. Eyes carved into a permanent stare of stone-bound judgment. His expression was unreadable, yet unwavering. Stoic. Unyielding.
He bowed his head to the stone sentinel—not out of reverence, but recognition. A warrior's nod.
Then he moved on.
As he descended deeper, the air thinned and chilled. The walls narrowed, the light dimmed. He paused halfway down the spiraling path and leapt, his weakened ether carrying him in a slow, drifting glide. Not elegant, but enough to cover ground.
He floated gently down the second half of the spiral, landing softly near the base. And there they were again.
The statues of the soldiers.
Lined on both sides of the corridor. Motionless, helmeted, shields in hand. Each one slightly different, yet all sharing the same posture. Silent watchers. He remembered the first time he passed them—how he had felt as though their eyes followed him, how he thought one might step forward and speak.
They didn't.
He walked through their ranks, the silence growing heavier with every step.
Then he stopped.
The floor beneath him shifted—no, changed. Stone gave way to something colder. Smoother. Ancient.
He looked up.
There it was.
A massive black chrysalis. As tall as a building. Hanging from the arched ceiling like a monument to dread. Veins of black pulsed faintly along its surface. It breathed—slowly. Faintly. Alive.