Darkness.
Li Wei woke to complete darkness. His eyes were open, he was certain of that, but he could see nothing. For a moment panic gripped him, irrational and immediate.
Am I blind? Did something happen while I was unconscious?
Then his vision adjusted slowly, and he realised it wasn't complete darkness after all. Dim light filtered in from somewhere.
The doorway behind him, probably. But the interior of the structure was deep in shadow, and his eyes needed time to parse what little illumination reached this far inside.
The pain hadn't lessened. If anything, it had intensified during his period of unconsciousness. His chest felt like someone had built a fire inside it. The wound throbbed with each heartbeat, sending rhythmic waves of agony through his torso. T
The sword was still there, still lodged in his back, its presence impossible to ignore. But the quality of the pain had changed.
The flesh around the blade had tightened further, contracting with relentless pressure that made every breath feel like his body was trying to crush the metal from the inside.
It's getting worse. The tightening is getting worse. If I don't remove it soon, the pressure alone might kill me.
The realisation brought with it a cold, terrible clarity. He'd failed to remove the sword outside because the pain had been too great. Because he'd been too weak. Because the fear of bleeding out had stopped him from following through.
But now, lying in the darkness of this abandoned home, he understood that keeping the sword in place was just as fatal as removing it. Slower, perhaps. More agonising. But just as certain.
I have to pull it out. Have to do it now, before the tightening gets any worse. Before my body contracts so hard around the blade that removal becomes impossible.
He tested his body carefully, taking inventory of what still worked and what didn't. His right arm responded when he tried to move it, though the muscles felt weak and shaky. His left arm was still mostly useless, the shoulder protesting even the smallest attempt at movement.
Both legs could shift position slightly, but whether they could support any weight was another question entirely.
The floor beneath him was hard and uncomfortable. Wood planks, slightly uneven, with gaps between them where he could feel cool air rising from whatever space lay below.
His cheek rested against the surface, and he could smell the wood. Old. Dry. Tinged with smoke and years of habitation.
Do it now. Before I lose what little strength I have left.
He rolled slightly onto his right side, angling his body to give his right arm better access to the sword hilt. The movement sent fresh spikes of pain radiating from the wound, but he forced himself to continue. His hand reached back, fingers searching for the hilt that protruded from his back.
There. His fingers wrapped around the leather grip. The metal was warm from his body heat, slick with blood that had dried and congealed around the entry point. He adjusted his grip, trying to find a position that would give him maximum leverage.
Pull straight out. Don't twist. Don't angle it. Just straight out, as fast as I can manage.
His heart rate increased. He could feel it accelerating, feel the rhythm changing from its abnormally slow pace to something faster. Fear or adrenaline or whatever passed for physiological response in his current state.
His breathing quickened, too, each rapid inhalation pulling at the wound and making the pain worse.
On three. Count to three and then pull. Don't think about it. Don't hesitate. Just do it.
One.
His grip tightened on the hilt. His muscles tensed in preparation.
Two.
This is going to be worse than anything I've felt so far. Worse than waking up. Worse than crawling. This is going to be agony beyond imagining.
Three.
He pulled.
The blade moved immediately, sliding out with a wet, grinding sensation that made his stomach heave. Maybe two inches. Maybe three. But the pain was instantaneous and catastrophic.
It felt like someone had reached inside his chest and was tearing out his internal organs by hand. Every nerve in his torso screamed in unified protest.
"AHHH!"
His vision whited out. His body convulsed. But his hand stayed locked on the hilt, and some part of him that existed beyond conscious thought kept pulling. Kept dragging the blade out inch by terrible inch.
Four inches. Six. Eight.
Keep going. Don't stop. If I stop now I'll never start again.
The blade scraped against bone on its way out. Against ribs or vertebrae or something else he couldn't identify. The sensation was worse than the pain somehow.
More visceral. More real. His mind provided helpful details about what was happening, cataloguing each stage of the removal process with clinical precision even as the rest of him screamed in agony.
Ten inches. Twelve.
Blood poured from the wound now. He could feel it, hot and immediate, soaking through his already blood-soaked shirt.
Flowing down his side to pool on the wooden floor beneath him. More blood than there should be. More blood than his body could possibly have left after all the previous losses.
Almost out. Almost. Just a little more.
Fourteen inches. Sixteen.
The blade came free.
He felt the moment it happened. Felt the absence where foreign metal had been for hours. Felt the sudden emptiness in his chest that was somehow worse than the presence had been.
The wound gaped open, nothing to hold the torn flesh together, nothing to block the flow of blood from severed vessels.
The sword fell from his hand, clattering against the wooden floor. The sound seemed impossibly loud in the silence. He lay there, gasping, shaking, bleeding freely onto the planks beneath him.
I did it. I actually did it. The sword is out.
The relief lasted approximately three seconds before a new realisation crashed down on him.
I'm bleeding to death. Right now. This moment. I'm bleeding out, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
His right hand moved instinctively to the wound, pressing against the torn flesh in a futile attempt to stanch the flow. Blood poured between his fingers, hot and slick and unstoppable.
The pressure of his palm against the wound sent fresh waves of agony through him, but he kept pressing. Kept trying to hold himself together through sheer force of will.
Time passed. He didn't know how much. Seconds. Minutes. Maybe longer. His breathing came in short, rapid gasps. His vision darkened at the edges, then cleared, then darkened again in a rhythmic pattern that matched his heartbeat.
This is it. This is how I die. Bled out on the floor of a stranger's house. At least the sword is out. At least I managed that much.
But he didn't die.
The blood flow slowed. Not stopped, but slowed. From a pour to a seep. From a seep to a trickle. His hand remained pressed against the wound, fingers splayed across torn flesh, and he could feel something happening beneath his palm.
The same wrongness that had kept him alive with a sword through his chest. The same mechanical, mindless maintenance.
The wound is closing. Like before with the tightening.
He kept his hand in place, afraid that removing it might undo whatever process was occurring. Minutes passed. Long, agonising minutes where he lay in the darkness and felt his body perform impossible repairs through mechanisms he couldn't begin to understand.
The blood stopped flowing entirely.