The pressure was crushing him. His astral form flickered on the edge of dissolving, his soul pressed between the plates of existence, and yet through all of it one thought burned clear.
She brought me here.
Everyone wanted something. It was the first rule twenty-three years of being discarded had taught him. Foster parents kept him until the checks stopped coming, employers used him until he broke their equipment, and friends drifted away once his bad luck became inconvenient. Nobody did anything for free. If this being had dragged him through layers of reality he couldn't begin to understand, then he had something it wanted.
He gathered what remained of his fragmenting will and pressed it into a single point. It was like trying to speak while drowning, like screaming into the void and expecting the universe to listen, but he forced the thought out.
What do you want from me?
For a moment there was nothing but the pressure and the slow, soft breathing of something vast and patient. Then she answered.
"You were never unlucky, child. You were eaten."
Each syllable carried a weight that made the chains around him shudder.
"You were meant for greatness. But there are eyes that see through the incarnation veil, and they found you early. They have been sitting at your table ever since."
Makun tried to hold onto the words. Eaten. A table. The incarnation veil. They felt important and alien, like a language he had never learned, and all he could grasp was their shape: what had happened to him his whole life had not been chance. Someone had done it, and kept doing it. And yet, was any of this real? Maybe he was already dead, and this was his brain's last attempt to make sense of a senseless life.
You still haven't answered, he pushed, his whole soul shaking with the effort. What do you want? And what do I get?
Silence. Then something like surprise rippled through the dark.
"Interesting."
The word carried layers: amazement, recognition, understanding. That he could speak here at all, in this place and to her, was like an ant lifting an elephant, and it told her something. She understood now why they had done what they did.
"The dying do not fall this far," she murmured, more to herself than to him. Then her presence steadied and grew stronger. "I have already given you a gift. I am sure you know it."
The broken link. The wholeness that had flooded back into him. He knew.
"When the time comes for you to repay that debt, oblige. Do not forget."
Her voice was fainter now, as if holding the connection cost even her more than she could keep paying. Makun felt the debt settle around him like another chain, though this one was different. It wasn't suppression. It was obligation.
What is it you want?
She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "A link is undone. A lamp has been lit in a dark house, and those who dine will see the light." Each word seemed to cost her. "Grow. Dive deep into the Mystic. Climb until the chains have nothing left to hold, and then you will pay what you owe."
Who are they? He hurled the thought with every fragment of strength he had left. Answer me!
He could feel her slipping away into whatever realm beings like her lived in. He had lived his whole life without answers. Everyone who had hurt him, abandoned him or used him had done it from the shadows, and he deserved to know who was responsible for the wreck of his existence.
Who did this to me?
But she was gone, and the connection was cut.
At once the chains yanked tight, and the silver cord snapped back like a stretched rubber band. No. Not yet. I still have questions—
The return was violent. Makun slammed back into his body like a meteor striking the earth, and the body, which had been quietly shutting down, convulsed. Every muscle seized at once. His back arched off the floor, his fingers clawed at the tiles, and his mouth opened on a scream that made no sound.
Then the pills came up, all of them. His body rejected them with brutal efficiency, heaving until every trace of the poison was out, while the broken link and the piece of soul that had come back to him burned through his system like a cleansing fire. Physical and spiritual agony twisted together into something beyond either, and this time Makun screamed out loud, raw and broken, as his body purged itself and his mind tried to understand what had happened to it.
The chains were still there; he could feel them even in his flesh. But one link was gone, and its absence left him more alive than he had ever felt, and more frightened. Most of what she had said made no sense to him yet. One thing did.
They were coming for him now, whoever they were.