After a lunch of heavy bread and vegetable stew, the guilt of freeloading finally caught up to me.
I walked back out to the yard and approached the chopping block. Silas had a cord of wood that needed splitting for the coming autumn nights. I picked up the rusted iron axe. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds.
'Alright,' I thought, eyeing a particularly thick log. 'I can't swing a sword, but I can swing an axe.'
I heaved the axe over my shoulder, braced my core, and brought it down with everything I had.
Thwack.
The axe head bit into the wood... about half an inch deep. It didn't split. It didn't even splinter. It just stuck there, mocking me.
I wrestled the axe out, panting, and swung again.
Thwack.
Another half-inch scratch.
I spent the next hour waging a brutal, humiliating war against a single log of wood. I wasn't chopping it; I was effectively scratching it to death. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my scars.
Finally, with one last, exhausted heave, the log cracked down the middle and fell into two uneven pieces.
I leaned on the axe handle, gasping for air, feeling immensely victorious.
Then I turned my head.
Lily was sitting on the back steps, a rag doll clutched in her hands. She was watching me.
And her face... her face was a masterpiece of profound, devastating, ten-year-old pity. She looked at me the way you look at a three-legged dog trying to climb a flight of stairs.
My pride, already battered and bruised, took a critical hit.
I dropped the axe and wiped my brow. "What are you looking at?" I asked, trying to sound gruff.
Lily immediately looked away, whistling innocently at the sky. "Nothing."
I marched over to the steps. Before she could react, I reached down and snatched the rag doll right out of her lap.
Lily gasped, her eyes going wide with outrage. "Hey! Give me back Sir Fluffles!"
I grinned, my bad mood evaporating. I held the doll high above my head, well out of her reach. "I don't know, Lily. Sir Fluffles looks like he wants to hang out with me for a bit. We're going to talk about woodchopping techniques."
She scrambled to her feet, jumping and swiping at my arm. "No! Give him back! You're a bully!"
She threw a full-blown tantrum, stomping her feet and trying to climb my leg like a tree. I kept laughing, sidestepping her easily despite my limp.
After a minute of failing to reach her toy, Lily stopped. Her lower lip began to tremble. Her big, dark eyes suddenly welled up with glossy tears. She looked down at the dirt, sniffing pitifully.
My heart instantly melted. 'Crap, I took it too far.'
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry," I said, my voice softening immediately. I lowered my arm, holding the doll out to her. "Here you go. Don't cry."
The absolute second her little fingers closed around the doll's arm, her tears vanished.
Her face morphed from tragic heartbreak to an expression of absolute, smug victory. She clutched the doll to her chest and gave me a grin that screamed: My acting worked flawlessly, you absolute sucker.
Before I could even process the betrayal, she spun around and sprinted into the house, cackling wildly.
I stood there, staring at the empty doorway, my jaw slightly slack. Then, a genuine, loud laugh bubbled out of my chest. It hurt my ribs, but I didn't care.
"I got played by a ten-year-old," I chuckled, shaking my head.
The sun was starting to set, casting long, golden shadows across the yard. I turned and walked back inside, heading toward my small room.
As I opened the door, the dimming evening light caught the bedside table.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
The crystal sphere.
The last time I looked at it, it contained a single, dense blue wisp. But now?
Floating lazily around the blue light was a second wisp. This one was a brilliant, shimmering gold. They danced around each other inside the glass, a mesmerizing twin orbit of blue and gold.
My heart did a strange, excited flip. Anticipation coiled in my stomach.
I walked over and picked the sphere up. The glass was warm to the touch. Without hesitation, I opened my circuits and fed it mana.
Just like this morning, it ate it greedily, like a starved child finally getting a meal. I let it feed, watching the golden wisp flare and brighten, until the familiar ache in my core forced me to cut the connection.
I was completely drained, but I couldn't stop staring at the changing artifact.
"What are you turning into?" I whispered.
I set the ball right next to my pillow. After heading out for a quiet dinner with Silas and Elara, I returned to the room, completely exhausted. I collapsed onto the bed, pulled the covers up, and rolled onto my side, facing the crystal. The soft, dual glow was the last thing I saw before sleep dragged me under.
I didn't feel it move.
Hours later, in the dead of night, the crystal sphere shone with a brilliant, comforting light. Slowly, it rolled across the mattress until it pressed against my chest, right over my heart.
The glass grew incredibly warm.
A gentle, soothing golden light bled out from the sphere, sinking directly through my clothes and into my skin. It didn't burn. It felt like lying in a ray of perfect spring sunlight.
Inside my body, the light went to work. It wrapped around my fractured ribs, knitting the micro-fissures together. It smoothed out the jagged edges of my torn muscles. It crept up my neck and across my face, soothing the ruined skin. The jagged, pink burns and the horrific scars from the flaying knives began to fade, melting away like bad dreams.
It didn't bring my eye back. The empty socket remained, the skin over it still bearing a thin, silver line where Liam's blade had cut deep.
But by the time the golden light finally diminished, leaving the room heavy with a thick, pure spiritual energy... I was no longer a broken boy.
My breathing was deep. Steady.
And for the first time in a week, I was healing.