Ethan James awoke because of the pain in the chest.
Not the sharp kind. Not that which leaves you screaming.
The pondering pain that heavy sits there and you are reminded that your body is broken.
Waiting He listened a moment, and looked at nothing, and listened to the sound of his breathing. Each breath felt wrong. Too shallow. Too careful. And thus was his body scared to flow.
He didn't blame it.
This was a body that had been almost killed yesterday.
Slowly he turned round and looked around.
The room was small. Smaller than he had imagined it was the night before. Everything had been worse in the morning daylight, rotting wood, a wall that was broken down, a hole in the roof, the cloth that was stitched over it. The dust was falling lazily along.
Here it was you lived, huh? he thought.
No anger. Just a quiet heaviness.
During his time, servants wiped the floor twice a day. This place was to be inhaled as punishment.
He tried to sit up, pain flared immediately.
He stopped, closed his eyes, waited.
Any movement screamed to him in his vanity. To force it. To prove something.
The first time was when he was killed by pride.
so when the pain had reduced to manageable dimensions, he would wait till it had become manageable, and then, a notch at a time, he pulled himself up. His back was so wet with sweat when he was eventually sitting that his shirt was wet.
Pity, his mind was saying.
He didn't argue with it, he just breathed.
A knock came at the door.
Soft. Careful.
"Brother james?" Lily James asked quietly.
"Yes," he replied after a moment.
The door was opened part way, and then opened even more when she had a glimpse of him being awake. She was carrying a bowl in her hands as though it were something significant.
Oh, you are up already, she thought, in an astonished manner. "You should still be resting."
He looked at the soup. Then at her tired eyes.
"I've rested enough," he said.
That wasn't true.
But it felt right to say.
She frowned but didn't argue. He was presented with the bowl, and could discern how her fingers lingered half a second as though she were endeavoring to check whether he was really there.
He drank slowly. He did not mind, although it was a terrible taste, when he had finished he returned the bowl.
"Thank you," he said.
She smiled, then hesitated.
You... you are not like you used to be to-day, she said apprehensively.
He froze, different, that word carried danger.
"Am I?" he asked.
She nodded. "You look... awake."
He did not know what to do about that.
As she had left him he sat on the bed gazing at the floor, awake, yeah.
That was one way to put it.
He attempted to seek spiritual power again.
Nothing, not even a flicker.
It indeed was like hugging with a mutilated hand.
His jaw tightened, power in his final life was so readily gained that he forgot what it is like to be deprived of it. He had now understood why poor humans clung to hope like a life raft.
There was nothing otherwise.
He slid off the bed slowly. His legs shone so that he had to lean on the wall.
He fancied almost that he must vomit.
He waited, when the shaking was over he made his way to the small open room that opened onto the window and sat on the floor.
Wood, Desensitized on his body.
He closed his eyes, no dramatic technique. No glowing light.
Just breathing. In, out. Slow.
Sufferings almost take their place. His ribs were protesting the breath of his breath. His back was screaming against the fact that he was not supported. His legs went numb.
He wanted to stop, the thought came quietly.
Just rest today. Start tomorrow, tomorrow was a lie.
By remaining weak tomorrow people could remain weak.
He kept breathing, his thoughts wandered.
He remembered an occasion when he had a fight with Victor Hale who had laughed. Remembered that he had made a blind faith.
The memory burned.
His breathing faltered, pain surged.
He sniffed, cleared his throat, hunkered, coughing till he appeared to be scratching his chest with his nails. Something warm touched his lips. Blood, again.
He stared at it on the floor, for a long time, he didn't move.
Then he lisped with his sleeve, and sat down.
"Not dying today," he muttered.
The words sounded thin.
But he said them anyway.
This occasion made him focus on something different.
Not power, not revenge, just staying present.
Feeling where his body hurt. Where it didn't. What still worked.
Slowly, very slowly, he felt it, not energy.
Something smaller, awareness.
What a warmness to the sunshine his skin had. His heart beat was slower and his breathing was even.
It wasn't strength, but it was control.
It was not dramatic that his body finally got him exhausted. and, leaning, thrust his head there and looked wearily at the floor.
He didn't feel proud, he felt tired.
But also... less afraid.
Voices woke him later.
He didn't open his eyes.
"...still alive, huh?"
Marcus Reed.
The fingers of Ethan James twitched.
"Barely," someone else said. "He's useless."
"Good," Marcus Reed replied. "Let him stay that way."
Footsteps moved away.
Ethan James waited until the sounds were eliminated and is it my worth to-day, he said. Not worth the effort.
That was fine.
Earlier on, he had been underestimated.
Lily James was back the same night. She brought him up, and said nothing, because she evidently knew that words were unnecessary.
Before she left, she paused.
Don't go away, you know," she said.
He looked at her.
"I won't," he said.
He meant it.
The agony was intermittent when it was dark. His body throbbed. His head ached. Sleep came and went.
But somewhere in the affliction and the fatigue there came some kind of a silence.
He wasn't strong, he wasn't special, not yet.
But he was alive.
And this time...
He would learn how to hurt and keep going anyway. Sleep didn't come easy, when it did, it wasn't kind.
Ethan James had a dream of falling.
Not a cliff, or the sky, not down, but simply sinking. Slowly. As they would not have noticed being pulled down to the bottom of a deep water.
It gave him a sharp inhalation of pain in his chest, as he leaped to his feet.
Nor did he know where he had been.
Then the pain reminded him.
Through this broken window came pale and weak morning light again. His clothes were dripping with sweat. His throat felt raw.
He sat up slowly rolling on his side. This pain was still identical, except that... not new. And like a laceration, and not a new laceration.
That was progress. Maybe.
The city was already in daytime. Hack, Whack, Whack, Carts on the Pavements. Life went on as though nothing had changed.
He slowly rose with the wall supporting him.
Saying now to himself, I walk outside.
This thought appalled him more than he thought.
Outside meant people. Eyes. Marcus Reed. The academy. The awakening of what he was in this world.
But hiding wouldn't save him.
He pushed the door open.
The air outside was colder, he guessed, than what. It smelled of dust, metal and smoke. The sun was over and the shadows very long on the rugged ground.
Others passed by and did not even give him a glance.
Good.
He pawed at the ground, fumbled, labored his way to the rear of the shack, and down to a small patch of unused space of dirt and broken rock.
This was as private as it got.
He crossed knees and his hands across his knee.
No one was watching, that mattered.
He closed his eyes again.
This time he did not even pretend to be composed.
He left himself to be frustrated, Let the anger breathe.
He bitterly thought that I was one of the cultivators of the Saint Realm. I stood above nations. And now can I hardly sit down.
His jaw tightened.
They would laugh in case any one of his past life looked at him to-day also.
Victor Hale would laugh.
The thought had sharpened something in him.
Power was no longer an issue now to him, but memory.
Back then, there were rumors. With regard to extreme body-refinement techniques. Ways of dealing with people that have broken foundations. Most of the sects forbade such painful and dangerous things.
Because they worked.
At a cost.
He remembered one that he had snatched a peep at in a clandestine way. Thought it was interesting. Too crude. Too inefficient to be able to do it.
Now?
Now it was perfect.
Pain being ignored he changed his position somewhat and began.
Not chanting, not circulating energy, Just clenching of a couple of muscles. Holding. Releasing. A breathing pattern which was to make the body adjust.
It hurt immediately, Not sharp pain.
Burning pain,His legs trembled. His back cramped. His face was smeared with sweat in a couple of seconds, He wanted to scream, Instead he griped his teeth.
A minute passed.
Then another.
His breathing went ragged. His vision blurred. Stop, his body begged.
He didn't.
When he finally dropped backwards in the mud he lay there gazing at the sky with a heaving bosom.
He laughed once, It came out rough and broken.
So there is the way, he said to himself.
The rest of the day was a lengthy one.
He didn't train again, He couldn't.
All of his muscles were very puffy and stinking, like he had been whipped inside.
Lily James passed in the afternoon and delivered food. She had noticed his dirty clothes and made no inquiry.
Smart girl.
The same night as he was lying on the bed he felt something. Not strength, warmth.
Something somehow real inside his heart.
He frowned.
As soon as he tried to focus on it, it disappeared. But he felt it.
The next day hurt more.
Crawling out of bed took a longer time. Twice his legs almost failed. But he went outside again.
Sat in the dirt again, did it again.
His physique was not as long today as it was yesterday, progress wasn't kind.
On the third day Marcus Reed returned.
He didn't come alone.
Ethan James had gone half way through his breathing when he was covered with shadows.
Why, there you go, said Marcus Reed. "Trash learned how to sit now."
Ethan James had not opened his eyes.
That annoyed Marcus Reed.
A foot slammed into his side.
Pain exploded. He rolled, and coughed, with the dirt on his tongue.
Marcus Reed snatched up his collar and lifted him.
So you can think that you can now treat me as you ought not?
Ethan James met his eyes.
No fear.
Just tired contempt. That look snapped something.
Marcus Reed punched him.
Once, Twice.
The world spun, Ethan James didn't fight back.
He let it happen, he possessed a sort of knowledge to which Marcus Reed was ignorant. Pain wasn't new to him anymore.
Ethan James was swallowing again at the instant Marcus Reed stepped backward, choking.
You are nothing," Marcus Reed spit. "Remember that."
They left laughing.
Ethan James had a long time to stand still.
Then he pushed himself up.
Slowly, painfully. He sat back down, Closed his eyes and continued.
That night, he didn't dream. He slept like stone. It took place on the seventh day.
He was breathing. Tightening. Holding.
Pain built like always.
Then...
Something moved, it wasn't imagination.
There was some warmness, through one of his barred courses, weak, but impossible.
His breath caught. He almost lost it.
Careful, he warned himself, slow.
The warmth faded. But it left something behind, hope.
Ethan James woke up with a laugh upon himself, not loudly, not proudly.
Just enough to say, I'm not done yet.
And the future was now no longer like a wall as it had not been since I had wakened up in this broken body. It felt like a climb.