Chapter 2: A Broken Vessel, a Healing Soul
The second time Arose opened his eyes, the light wasn't warm and divine like the Mycelium's embrace—it was gray and unfeeling. The ceiling above him was stained with water marks, flickering in rhythm with a broken lightbulb that buzzed like a dying insect. There was a stench in the room—a mix of mold, piss, and decay. He blinked, breathing shallowly, his lungs aching with every breath.
His tongue was dry. His throat still hurt. The pain was familiar now. Like a burn that refused to scab.
He sat up slowly. His bones cracked, his muscles protested, and for a moment, he wondered if he had landed in a prison. But the mattress underneath him was too filthy even for that. No, this was something worse.
His hands trembled as he looked down at them—thin, pale fingers with purple bruises still fading. His arms were bony, frail. His ribs jutted out like he hadn't eaten properly in years. He was wearing someone else's shirt—no, his shirt now—but it was oversized, tattered, and smelled like cigarette ash.
The memories came slowly.
Tracy Mimes. That was the name of the boy whose body he now occupied. A name that carried pain like a shadow.
Tracy was born to a drug-addicted mother and a gang-affiliated father. There was no love in that house—only screaming, fists, silence, and the sting of abandonment. Tracy had grown up in hunger. In fear. In rejection. He never had a birthday party. Never had a bedtime story. Just fists and needles and shouting.
By sixteen, the damage was irreparable. He stopped fighting it. One night, when the pain and emptiness outweighed even the fear of death, Tracy found escape in the only way he knew how: overdosing on stolen pills and cheap liquor.
He had died with tears on his face.
And Arose—cast out of Fort Salem, betrayed and consumed by the Mycelium—took his place.
The weight of that reality settled in Arose's chest like a stone. He looked into a cracked mirror by the corner of the room. The reflection was haunting: a boy with jet-black hair, shaggy and unkempt, eyes sunken but still carrying a flicker of something ancient beneath their brown irises.
Arose touched his chest. He could still feel it—a tether to the Mycelium. A heartbeat beyond the veil, faint and trembling, but present. The knowledge of the dead witches, the symphonies of spells, the ancient chords of Work were still inside him. But they were all jumbled, shattered like broken glass.
He could no longer summon even the simplest spell. No Work through his throat. His soul—the core of his power—had been damaged by the leap across realities.
He was a blade dulled and rusted.
But not broken beyond repair.
"This body… it needs to heal," Arose whispered, though the sound was more rasp than word. His throat burned just from speaking.
He crawled from the mattress to a chipped wooden floor, his knees scraping against the rough surface. He breathed slowly, closing his eyes.
He couldn't use Work. Not yet. But there were older practices. Forgotten disciplines that the Mycelium only barely remembered.
He placed his hands together and began a ritual of healing—not magical, but meditative. He slowed his heartbeat. He visualized his soul like a cracked vessel being gently mended. He focused on the pulse of this body, the rhythm of breath, the beat of life.
This is your vessel now, he told himself. This pain is yours. But so is the power to rise.
Night after night, Arose practiced. He gathered rainwater in bowls and cleaned the room. He sold scrap for a little food. He learned to move with Tracy's frail limbs, and gradually, he started to own them. The bruises faded. The bones filled out.
By the second month, he could speak more clearly, even if his throat still protested with hoarseness. He used sound—not Work, but music—to explore his body's limits. He hummed to test pitch, tapped rhythms against the walls, and listened to how sound responded to his fingers.
Even in this weak, human body, vibration was still a constant.
And that was something he could build on.
The Mycelium's vast library of memories was like a storm in his mind. It would take time to sort through them. He had to be careful—not all memories were kind. Some were painful, violent, twisted by centuries of war and trauma. But there was wisdom in them. Techniques. Pathways.
He would get stronger. Not to prove anything to Fort Salem. Not for revenge. But because he had been chosen by something ancient. And that choice carried meaning.
He was Arose, once called unworthy. Now reborn as Tracy Mimes.
A new life. A broken start.
But still breathing.
And where there is breath—there is power.