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Chapter 59: Rebirth pt. 1

  With a sharp crash, the vase shattered through the stained-glass window, clearing a path. The girl leaped after it, twisting in the air before landing hard on a nearby rooftop. She staggered, arms outstretched, teetering dangerously over the drop to the streets below. After a breathless moment, she steadied herself and adjusted her bow and quiver, shifting them into a more comfortable position.

  A sharp whistle cut through the air. A bolt streaked past, close enough that she felt it graze her sleeve. Her rucksack jerked as the projectile sliced through the fabric, sending a cascade of small, glowing gems spilling onto the rooftop.

  "No!" She slapped a hand over the tear, her glare snapping toward the guards still inside the building—already reloading for another shot.

  The guards hesitated, their heavy armour making a rooftop pursuit impossible. She saw her chance—and took it.

  Sprinting across the rooftop, she leaped from one building to the next. It wasn't long before a growing assault of soldiers trailed along her through the streets below. Her dead sprint turned to a winding snake as she dodged about chimneys and aside skylights, trying to break their line of sight.

  Her battalion of pursuers went from a hectic stampede to a coordinated offensive, their shouts ringing out all over the city. Horns blared out, alerting guards ahead of her. Coloured flags were waved in some kind of military communication she couldn't understand. As her pursuers grew more organized, her escape became more challenging. Teams broke off into many flanking squadrons, filling out any possible escape routes. She wanted to get down to ground level and disappear into the city crowds, but every alleyway she considered was cut off before she could descend. At least one pair of eyes was always tracking her moves at any moment.

  A volley of arrows whistled through the air. She swerved, shifting course to avoid getting pinned down. Her initial humour at the easily avoided attack was swiftly wiped away when a second failed volley made it clear they weren't trying to hit her but herd her. She had to think fast; she couldn't let herself get captured, she couldn't have her identity revealed, or her dad would kill her!

  Eventually, they forced her to the edge of town, her feet skidding to a halt as the rooftop she ran about pressed against the towering city walls. The guards moved with practiced precision below on either side of her, flooding in from both streets, sealing off every escape. She was trapped.

  A dead end. No way out.

  She swore she'd never do this again. Last time, it nearly killed her—but a chance of death was far better odds than guaranteed death.

  A shudder rippled through her body. Her baggy clothes stretched as muscle and fur surged beneath them. Bones realigned, limbs coiled with new power—then she sprang.

  The leap sent her soaring high above the wall, the wind whipping past her face. Below, dozens of upturned helmets stared in disbelief. A wild howl tore from her throat, half triumph, half exhilaration.

  The city fell away behind her as she crested past the wall. Now, all she had to do was land.

  Her triumphant howl was cut short, turning into a strangled gasp as the other side of the city wall revealed an enormous cliff face plunging into a dark forest impossibly deep down. The ground wasn't even visible she was so high up. Only open air beneath her.

  Panic surged through her chest as she flailed, gravity yanking her down at terrifying speed. The wind roared in her ears, her heart hammering against her ribs. The abyssal forest canopy below rushed toward her—

  Then, impact. A blinding burst of pain. And then—nothing.

  Her consciousness snapped back into place, only to be immediately struck by pain—absolute, all-consuming. For a moment, she was sure she had died. When she realized she hadn't, she only wished she had.

  Her eyes were open, yet they refused to register any information sent to them. Her mind was trapped by the flatness she felt throughout her body.

  That was the only way she could describe it: as a flatness, as a sense that her body wasn't as filled as it should be. She felt like she had been stretched and compressed, emptied of substance; her weight and solidity turned abstract. She tried to push her body up, but no limbs moved to her command, and instead, she immediately lost consciousness.

  For a few hours, perhaps even a day or two, she did nothing but lay in the shattered crater of her own making, dressed in her own blood while slipping in and out of awareness. She had to fight bitterly to regain every one of her senses.

  First was her mind: a throbbing, gnawing ache burrowed into her skull, pulsing with every weak beat of her heart. It was as though her brain had swollen, pressing against the inside of her head, drowning in a tide of its own cerebral fluids. Thought itself was a struggle—a tangle of searing knots locked deep within her mind that she had to somehow unravel.

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  There was something malignant festering inside her, a smothering fog that coiled around her very sense of being. Words and ideas and actions and identity all blurred in a formless distortion. But even without self-knowledge she fought, she fought against the aching, she thought against the death.

  Next was the sounds: the world itself had fled; it ran away from her, leaving only a constant high-pitched ringing that split through her skull. It bored into her, drilling into her newly reformed mind, threatening to shatter it all over again.

  Her ears broiled in a cool agony, an incomprehensible sensation both sharp and numbing. With her slow, stuttering capacity for thought, it eventually dawned that she was still falling! She was tumbling upside down, flying into the air, an emptiness against a weak wall; the soft floor below her was spinning into the sky: NO—no, that wasn't right. Her head was still broken.

  A slick, cold trickle of liquid ran from her ear. She wasn't too familiar with anatomy, but she knew that something important was leaving her, slipping away against her will. That fluid—she needed it. It was supposed to stay inside, supposed to belong to her. Why was it abandoning her? Without it, she couldn't tell up from down, self from void. She was floating in nothingness.

  Her mind swam in search of a solution. Her head still hurt so much. She was tormented by this dichotomy of infantile awareness. She knew that her mind wasn't thinking the way it was supposed to, but simultaneously, the thoughts felt so present.

  She wanted her mommy, no, it was a mother. Yes, she wanted her mother but… but that could not happen; why couldn't that happen? Her mother had left, had gone somewhere. The girl was going there now, going to death. It was waiting. Reaching. Its cold hands curled around her fraying awareness. Death was a scary place; she didn't want to go there; she needed to fight her mind, she needed to fight for consciousness, and she knew this was her last chance.

  Her ears were beyond saving for now. She knew that much. The next sense she considered was touch—but she dared not reach for it.

  If she reclaimed that sensation, the agony would consume her. She knew that once the sensation of touch returned, the hurt would be too much. She wouldn't survive the torture and if she did, her mind wouldn't come out unscathed.

  The other sense was sight. That one was possible. Her eyes were already open, yet the world remained empty—a void without form, without color. She strained, willing vision back into them, demanding her nerves to work, to obey. But nothing happened.

  Time lost meaning as she lay there, locked in this stalemate. Hours bled away, her will hammering against an unyielding darkness—until finally, a glimpse. A single, fragile thread of light, brown, crumbling, and dusty: dirt.

  Then more. The blurred smear of soil, streaked with red. Rainwater cutting tiny rivulets through the grime. It slid over her face, washing away the blood that had sealed her lashes shut. The world returned in pieces, hazy and indistinct but real, present.

  And then she saw her arm.

  The limb before her barely deserved the name. Flesh mulched, bone splintered, her hand a ruin of mangled meat. It was no longer a part of her—just a thing that shouldn't be. A grotesque mockery of what had once been her, but now other.

  There was something else that caught her eye. Just beyond the horror of her own body, a torn rucksack lay sprawled in the dirt. Its contents spilled freely, scattered like fallen stars. Glowing gems pulsing softly against the mud.

  One gem lay just in front of her, so close she could almost taste it.

  She couldn't move—nothing below her neck obeyed her will. But her tongue… maybe.

  Her mouth already hung open, her lower jaw slack, dislocated from the impact. Pain pulsed somewhere in the background, but it was distant, dulled by exhaustion. She had no strength to spare for suffering. Only for survival.

  Summoning every last thread of control, she willed her tongue forward. It trembled, weak, barely more than a twitch—but it was enough. The tip of her tongue brushed against the gem's smooth surface.

  A spark. A rush of warmth. It spilled into her like liquid daylight, a golden hum that seeped into her bones. The gem shrank beneath her touch, its glow fading as the warmth grew, wrapping around her battered form like a whisper of safety.

  Relief. Life. Hope.

  She internally thanked her mother for the boon; Sapphic had always said that light reached even the darkest crevices. And now, in the deepest abyss of her body's ruin, that light was finding her.

  With the strength granted to her by the gem's energy, she could begin to wiggle her fingers, but her toes remained unresponsive. It would seem that her spine was broken. But she wasted no energy mourning what she could not resolve. There was no time for that.

  She took her time to master her one functional arm. Her mind's concept of stable orientation was still shot and so moving the limb was more an act of randomized discovery than intentful action. Still she tried, slowly, painstakingly.

  She tried to grab the nearest gem, but her hand-eye coordination had become non-existent. Her hand hovered so near the gem, but it took so long to actually take hold. Fingers grasping at empty dirt, unable to find purchase. Minutes passed in agonizing, trembling stillness before her fingers finally brushed against the smooth surface. The connection sparked again, a warm pulse surging through her as she absorbed the gem's power.

  The energy flowed into her, a steady rush that unfurled through her arteries and veins, dislodging stagnant clots and healing collapsed pathways. It was slow, agonizing work, but with each wave of warmth, her body began to reknit.

  She could feel herself growing stronger.

  And so, her fingers moved—one gem at a time, until her arm could move, and she reached further to the next gem. And the next. The one after that. Each one an anchor, each one a small victory against the chaos that had left her destroyed.

  A few gems into her healing and the delicate threads of her nerves had rebound enough for her body's sensations to send their screeching protest to her mind. The pain was omnipresent, a grounded reality, a new law of existence.

  She felt as if this physical turmoil was her new form manifest. She battled against the urge to let it take her, to give up and succumb to a death less arduous than life.

  But she fought on.

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