'Damn... I really deserve a nice, fully paid vacation,' Zachary groaned as he flopped heavily beside Kai and the rest of the cohort.
Harus had wisely decided to retreat back to the Bright Castle. Not like the man could have done otherwise, considering the sheer severity of his injuries. And with Zachary finally outside the detection radius of the Lord of the Dead, the cohort could at last take a well-deserved rest. With the adrenaline completely gone from their systems, the injuries sustained during the catacombs' assault were finally making themselves known to the cohort's collective displeasure. A symphony of pained groans escaped their lips as they desperately tried to catch their breath.
Those groans began to dissolve, little by little, as Nephis moved through the group and began healing them.
But just as she reached out toward Zachary's shoulder, he grabbed her wrist gently, shaking his head with a failed, one-eyed wink.
"Don't worry about me. Focus on the rest, Neph," he said with a tired smile, before resting his back against Kai's.
Nephis regarded him with a deep frown. Her face no longer carried any active wounds, yet the grime and dried blood clinging to her skin were a testament to just how harsh the battle had been at the front lines. Zachary didn't look away as her scowl deepened, the physical pain of utilizing her healing Aspect clearly taking a toll on her. And yet, Zachary couldn't help but lampoon inwardly.
'This is just unfair... How is it possible that being entirely covered in blood and dirt only makes her look more striking?' He chuckled, closing his eye as he mentally reached for an explanation. 'It's either the absolute plot armor of a main character's charm, or Legacies are simply built different.'
Nephis didn't move her hand for another long second. But seeing his absolute, stubborn refusal, she simply stood up without a word and turned to the next party member in line. Kai turned his head briefly to watch them, but like the rest of the cohort, he was simply too exhausted to care about their exchange.
'Now, where was I... Oh yes, paid vacations!' Zachary thought, reopening his eye to the flat grey sky. 'After everything is over, where the hell should I go?'
A weak smile played on his lips as he mused over the question. Before being abruptly transported to this nightmarish world, he had been deep in the trenches working on his university dissertation. It wasn't the absolute final project required to obtain his title, but it was a massive, stressful step in doing so. Caught between endless, tedious meetings with his tutor and exhausting shifts at his part-time job, he had barely possessed the time to visit home.
And yet, home still wouldn't be an option for a vacation. After all, his family had a terrible habit of visiting his apartment completely unannounced, so wasting a precious break just to travel to a house a mere two hours away from campus wouldn't be wise.
Going out with friends? He had done that constantly back then. Visiting karaoke bars, crowded pubs, and going hiking. Then...
"Oh yeah, that could actually work..." Zachary muttered out loud, giving a firm nod of his head as a completely different smile spread across his face. His judo friend had been aggressively pressing him for some time to visit her hometown, and now... after everything he had gone through, the idea didn't sound bad at all.
"What was that?" Kai asked from behind him, his voice thick with exhaustion. He had clearly heard Zachary rambling to himself.
"Nothing. Just thinking about how much a bus ticket costs nowadays," Zachary answered vaguely, before wincing sharply as his ribs protested.
"What? Why would—you know what? I don't really care..." Kai muttered, wisely deciding to ignore his bizarre commentary.
But Zachary couldn't bring himself to laugh at the idol's antics. He looked down at his left arm with a heavy, pained frown. Despite being entirely covered by his mantle's sleeve, he could vividly feel the countless teeth marks adorning the entire length of his flesh. The cohort wasn't the only one crashing from the adrenaline high; his shoulder injury was growing increasingly agonizing with each passing minute. It wasn't quite as severe as the horrific wound he had received from the Stone Saints, but it was becoming incredibly annoying with every movement.
Not only that, but the brutal hit Harus had managed to land against his ribs was growing more uncomfortable with every deep breath he forced into his lungs.
With a soft sigh, Zachary gently touched his arm, but he immediately retracted his fingers with a sharp, pained hiss. The fabric of the mantle was sleek with thick blood that refused to easily flow away. Despite only touching it briefly, he could say with absolute certainty that the puncture wounds left by the leeches were incredibly deep.
But the worst of it was a entirely different biological crisis: those dozen parasites had sucked a massive, vital chunk of blood out of him before exploding. Even with his enhanced stamina and rapid metabolism, the sudden absence of his own ichor was making itself known. As the minutes ticked by, a heavy fog began to settle over his brain, leaving him feeling light-headed and distinctly weak. The blood loss was finally hitting him full force.
For a brief, fleeting moment, Zachary regretted denying Nephis's miraculous, agonizing touch. But he immediately cast the regret aside. It had been the right choice.
Shaking his head in a futile attempt to clear his foggy mind, he opened his palm, revealing the cold steel key. Despite going through so much unimaginable trouble to rip it away from the horde, Zachary knew it wasn't going to be useful anytime soon. He had clearly stated it before: they could have easily waited until Nephis claimed the final Shard Memory.
Yet, Zachary didn't sulk over the redundancy. The key was just a secondary boon. After all, he had thrown himself into that putrid mountain of bones for something far more valuable.
Name: Zachary.
True Name: Heaven's Equal. [Unclaimed]
Rank: Dreamer.
Soul Core: Dormant.
Soul Fragments: [1000/1000].
Memories: [Ender's Solace], [Witness' Testament], [Antlered Wrath], [Midnight Shard], [Ordinary Rock], [Endless Spring], [Ordinary Rope], [Rising Attachment], [Flame of the West], [Mantle of the Underworld], [Blood Arrow].
Echoes: [Carapace Scavenger], [Stone Saint].
Attributes: [The Fool], [Mark of Sin], [Conqueror's Soul], [Blasphemer], [Enlightenment], [Spark of Divinity], [Blood Weave].
Summoning his Runes, Zachary sighed in relief upon seeing the newest addition to his inventory of Memories. This acquisition made every single horrific thing he had just gone through entirely worthwhile; not only that, it conclusively confirmed his working theory regarding the exact Memory drop rates dictated by the Spell.
'Now I just have to think of a good opportunity to casually gift it to him,' Zachary thought, before dismissing the shimmering Runes from his sight.
Another couple of minutes bled away, and unfortunately, the group had to begin moving before the sun descended any lower into the horizon. Without exchanging a single word, the cohort rose to their feet, their expressions visibly improved. They didn't need to communicate the obvious: it was time to move. Smiling faintly at the collective groans of the party, Zachary stood up as well—only to stumble violently a second later, barely maintaining his vertical posture by blindly hanging onto Kai's shoulder.
The wave of sudden weakness hit him significantly harder than he had anticipated.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath to regain his equilibrium, Zachary flashed Kai an apologetic, weary smile before forcing himself to straighten up and catch his breath. 'This sudden exhaustion... it doesn't just stem from the massive blood loss. It's the loss of the biological Fragments.'
The physical augmentation his body experienced from absorbing Soul Fragments directly through digestion differed fundamentally from the standard method of absorbing soul shards. It was far more subtle, less explosive, and less direct. It prioritized the baseline physicality and raw stats of his human vessel rather than providing an immediate power spike like Soul Core saturation would do. That didn't mean the absence wasn't noticeable; after all, his physical body essentially functioned as an auxiliary reservoir for soul essence.
If Zachary had to scale the metrics poorly: without factoring Flow Control into the equation, absorbing Fragments directly into his muscles placed him a few distinct steps ahead in raw physical output compared to any other Sleeper possessing the exact same Core saturation.
And now that he had completely burned through the reserve of Fragments he had painstakingly cultivated over the months, the sudden drop in his baseline physical stats became glaringly obvious.
'I am seriously going to have to overhaul my diet from now on...' Zachary thought with a mocking internal laugh as they officially commenced their trek south. He was going to need a ridiculously high-protein regimen just to rebuild his baseline.
With that tactical reality in mind, Kai and Zachary pushed ahead of the rest of the group to scout. Outside the shifting confines of the Dark City, Effie's pathfinder experience was of no practical use, meaning he had to partner up with the dashing archer to chart the road ahead.
This marked the second time Zachary had ventured out into the true wild, and there was a minuscule but extremely distinct difference in how his abilities performed. Before arriving at the Dark City, Zachary and the girls had spent a couple of months drifting through the Crimson Labyrinth. Danger Sense had been their sole compass back then, but his sixth sense had been calibrated to the vastness and macro-scale of the exterior world. That was entirely contrary to the Ruins, which were deeply layered, vertically compressed, and packed far more dense information and localized danger into a smaller geographical area.
Having spent consecutive months sharpening his perceptions in such a high-intensity environment, his Danger Sense had calibrated to an even sharper, micro-focal degree. It was now capable of receiving vaguer, more expansive environmental feedback and translating it into actionable data. Combine that sensory evolution with Kai's flawless ability to fly, and they made quite the efficient scouting pair.
Unfortunately, Zachary was entirely unable to take any pride in their synergy, as his Mind and Body were currently focused entirely on the desperate act of keeping a hold of himself. As their rest period concluded and physical activity resumed, the sheer lack of blood and drained stamina grew increasingly impossible to ignore. Cold shivers began violently racing down his spine, a sickly, clammy sweat began beading heavily above his eyebrow, and his hidden injuries began to throb and itch with a renewed, agonizing intensity.
It was only through leaning directly into this sharp pain and discomfort that Zachary managed to hold his psyche together, relying entirely on his strict Body Control to ensure he didn't project a single symptom to the rest of the group.
'Those parasitic bastards really took a massive chunk of my blood...' Zachary grumbled internally as a severe shiver traveled through his back, only to mutate into a disgusting, nauseating sensation that settled heavily at the bottom of his stomach.
It had only been a few brief seconds of physical contact with the leeches, but at the end of the day, they were still Awakened Creatures while he remained a Dormant human. It was mathematically obvious they would do a severe number on his biology. In the original timeline, Sunny had only run into a single Fallen variant; meanwhile, Zachary had not only been forced to juggle that exact monstrosity and its lesser kin, but the entire swarm had drunk from his bloodstream simultaneously.
It was genuinely only thanks to the tenacious, unnatural qualities of Blood Weave and the baseline functions of his own Dormant Ability that he was currently capable of functioning "normally" at all.
Only Kai, walking directly beside him, caught a glimpse of how sickly, unnaturally pale his face had actually become.
"Are you okay, Zach?" the archer asked quietly as he received the Golden Rope, preparing to take flight and climb out of the deep crater they were currently traversing.
"Of course, man. Look at me," Zachary scoffed weakly, rotating his injured shoulder a few times to force the joint to comply. "I'm as fresh as a two-week-old lettuce."
Receiving a faint, amused huff of laughter as an answer, he grabbed the line and began to scale the steep, jagged crater wall with the rope's assistance. Climbing while deliberately avoiding the use of his left arm was proving to be an absolute logistical nightmare, but at the rapid pace his life was unraveling, hanging precariously from cliffs was quickly becoming second nature to him.
'How is blood actually made? Was it hematopoiesis?' Zachary mused as he continued the arduous climb.
Stem cells in the bone marrow... specialized cellular structures... something along those lines? He really hadn't paid that much attention in his high school biology classes.
Zachary wasn't asking himself these questions because the blood loss was actively compromising his thinking process; after all, Blood Weave was working meticulously behind the scenes to patch him over piece by piece. He was curious because the generation of blood was, at its core, a biological process. And just as he could consciously manipulate his metabolism and digestion, perhaps he could speed up this exact cellular manufacture through his Dormant Ability.
But as he considered the logistics carefully, Zachary immediately hit a hard wall. He couldn't do it.
Whether it was because he lacked the specific, granular medical knowledge to visualize the trigger, or because such a microscopic, cellular application of his Ability was simply too taxing for a Dormant human, the result was the same.
Perhaps once he finally underwent his Awakening and his abilities evolved, he could revisit the experiment.
Hauling himself out of the crater with Kai's assistance, Zachary turned to the idol with a curious smirk.
"Hey man, have you ever donated blood?" he asked, taking a raspy, shallow breath as he reached down to catch Caster's hand, helping him clear the ledge.
Kai raised an eyebrow at the sudden, random inquiry. But as he turned back to help Effie over the lip of the crater, a genuine, radiant smile spread across his handsome face at the sudden interest in his life.
"I actually have," Kai said excitedly, extending a hand to guide Cassie up next. "It was before my official debut. A few trainees and I participated in a major awareness campaign for a local children's hospital. I was told it went incredibly well—blood donations apparently spiked for the following months."
As Zachary helped Nephis climb up last, she looked over at Kai, nodding quietly as she caught the tail end of the conversation. "I think I remember that... I donated twice."
Hearing the subtle, uncharacteristic shift in Nephis's tone, Zachary couldn't contain a sudden chuckle. "So you were a fan of his before he even debuted, Neph?"
Kai smiled sheepishly at the confession, and a sudden, rigid tension locked Nephis's shoulders at her accidental slip-up. However, she regained her legendary composure a fraction of a second later, turning her striking grey eyes to lock Zachary in a deadpan stare.
"Is there a problem with that?" she asked, her voice entirely flat.
Perhaps if Zachary had been in a better physical condition, he would have pressed his luck further. He was genuinely curious to see how far the stoic Nephis could be rattled in a normal social situation. But given his current compromised state, and valuing his long-term physical integrity, he simply raised his hands in a gesture of swift, undisputed defeat. "Nothing at all. Lead the way, Kai."
Stepping out ahead of the cohort with hurried paces, the vanguard duo resumed their rapid march to chart the perimeter leading toward the Crimson Labyrinth.
"So, why were you so curious about blood donations anyway?" Kai asked casually a few minutes later, eager to keep the conversation going to pass the time.
Zachary shrugged, immediately wincing as the motion agitated the deep puncture in his shoulder. "Nothing in particular, really. It just crossed my mind considering our situation." But just as he was about to drop the topic, a sudden flash of clarity crossed his crimson eye.
"Actually, there is something," Zachary said, snapping his fingers. "Next time you go donate blood, make sure to go straight to a bar right after."
"Huh?" Kai turned to face him, his handsome features twisting into a thoroughly bewildered expression. "Why would I do that?"
"With less blood in your system, you'll get drunk way faster," Zachary explained with an unusual, solemn seriousness. "Mathematics, son! Less blood volume means a higher concentration of alcohol in what's left. Ergo, you need to purchase significantly less alcohol to achieve the exact same level of intoxication—thus saving a lot of money."
As he finished his exposition with a proud, definitive nod, Kai just stared at him with an increasingly bewildered look. "Why would you want to get drunk on purpose?"
Zachary stopped for a fraction of a second, regarding the dashing archer with the exact same look of utter disbelief. "Man, that's the whole point!"
A few minutes later, the cohort finally reached the southern fringes of the Crimson Labyrinth. While the jagged landscape that greeted them was entirely unfamiliar, Zachary was already expecting it. After all, the coral reefs sprawling to the south of the Dark City were notoriously plagued by a lethal, territorial tribe of iron spiders.
The cohort advanced cautiously, meticulously studying their bizarre surroundings. The towering crimson corals were densely strung with taut steel threads—wires so deceptively thin and razor-sharp that, if not for Zachary's sharpened senses alerting them to the danger, they would have walked straight into a geometric butchery.
With the hazard identified, Zachary decided to slip toward the rear of the formation, occasionally tossing out quiet warnings to guide the group around the deadly, metallic traps.
He was gradually regaining his natural color. Now that Blood Weave was starting to replenish his baseline blood volume, the passive Attribute could finally begin its work of accelerating his physical regeneration. Yet, his lingering injuries weren't the primary reason Zachary chose to take a backseat; it was simply that his direct intervention in the current situation was entirely unnecessary.
If his memory served him correctly, these iron spiders were merely Awakened creatures. The cohort was far too experienced to struggle against such standard monsters. Zachary had been clear that he would only pull his weight when facing hurdles that stepped far over the cohort's collective capabilities, but that didn't mean he intended to serve as the vanguard for every minor skirmish.
Besides, with Flow Control currently locked down and unavailable, his raw physical output wasn't actually that far ahead of theirs.
Almost as if summoned by his thoughts—or perhaps simply registering the sudden presence of uncorrupted souls invading their territory—dozens of spiders clad in dense steel plating erupted from the dark crevices of the coral pillars. They skittered and leapt across the interconnected iron wires, descending upon the group at terrifying speeds.
Yet, despite holding the absolute advantage of the terrain, they ran straight into the resolute, professional edge of the deadliest fighters the Outer Settlement had to offer.
Taking a few steps back to prevent his Blasphemer attribute from drawing any unwanted macro-attention, Zachary quietly summoned Ender's Solace in case it became absolutely necessary, watching the cohort's movements carefully.
Kai's arrows and Cassie's rapier were busy dealing with any spider moving above them through the high wires. Effie kept close to them, covering the flank with her shield, though with the extended reach of her bronze spear she managed to control a vast distance.
Finally, Caster and Nephis moved with deadly speed and fearsome precision; despite still being deeply tired, they only needed a single strike to end their enemies. Months of fighting in the ruins had forged their teamwork into something formidable.
Watching the spiders fall with a proud nod, Zachary mused to himself. 'With these numbers, the shards collected should be enough to finally put the cohort on the same level as the original timeline... Now, about Flow Control—'
But just as he was about to address his current crux, he detected a couple of stray spiders drifting through the wired tapestry above, dropping straight in his direction.
"Really, now?" Zachary grumbled, before a sudden, brilliant flash of tactical inspiration struck him.
He looked beside him to a massive patch of tangled wires that connected directly to the rest of the shining, metallic web spun across the coral. As the spiders continued to descend on his position, Zachary gently touched the wires with the cold edge of Ender's Solace, activating Thunder Song a split second later.
A blinding white current enveloped the edge of his sword, making the cohort flinch violently at the sudden, deafening cracking shriek that erupted from behind them. But what left them completely speechless as they whipped their heads around wasn't the mere sight of the lightning; it was watching the current violently surge through the steel wires, instantly electrocuting the spiders running across them.
Not only that, but the white arcs continued to race wildly through the air, perfectly exploiting the highly conductive properties of the iron wires. The lightning spread through the deadly tapestry with defiant, unmitigated arrogance. The very terrain that had given the spiders an absolute advantage had just been utterly turned against them. Worse for them, the steel plates covering their bodies only reinforced the lethal grounding effect, causing them to cook, boil, and hiss from within.
[You have killed an Awakened Beast...]
[You have killed an Awakened Beast...]
[You have killed an Awakened Beast...]
[You have killed an Awakened Monster...]
[You have killed an Awakened Beast...]
[You have killed...]
[...]
[...]
The contemptuous voice of the Spell resounded in an endless string inside his ears, but Zachary could only watch, gap-mouthed, as his sword finally stopped crying. The violent conclusion of the crackling lightning gave way to a deadly, heavy silence, broken only by the crunchy, post-mortem twitching of the spiders and the thick, sizzling smoke billowing off their charred carcases.
Looking away from Ender's Solace, Zachary raised his eye back to the cohort. They were staring at him with the exact same stupefied expression he had worn just seconds prior. Just like him, they were completely blindsided by the sudden, localized devastation the electricity had brought upon their enemies.
Only Nephis looked at him differently. Her gray eyes looked far deeper than usual, a heavy, unreadable feeling setting strongly behind them as she bore her serious gaze into him.
"Hehe..." A nervous, dry laughter escaped his lips. Zachary wanted to drop a snarky comment to deflect the suffocating attention, but unfortunately, absolutely nothing came to his mind.
Finally, and surprisingly, it was Nephis who broke the tense silence. "We don't have time to waste. Let's collect everything important."
Gifting Zachary one final, lingering look filled with that inexplicable intensity, she turned on her heel, walked over to a twitching, smoking carcass, and calmly began extracting the soul shards.
'Damn...' It was the only thing he managed to mutter to himself after a few seconds of agonizing clarity. 'You idiot... You couldn't just dispose of the spiders normally, could you? You had to go overboard as usual...'
Shaking his head and placing a cold palm over his eye, Zachary sighed tiredly. The cohort had seemingly forgotten about the lightning for a brief moment, but by dragging it right back out into the open, it was firmly back on the conversational menu. Clicking his tongue in defeat, he could only curse inwardly.
It was going to happen sooner or later.
As he leaned down to pry the shining soul shards from a charred spider that had died near his boots, another thought drifted through his mind. 'Having the ability to absorb fragments directly would be a huge boon at the rate I'm doing things...'
Zachary juggled the smooth, glowing shards in his palm a few times before slipping them into his pocket, a grim frown briefly crossing his features. 'Shit, I couldn't even pick up the Ascended shard from the Corpse Eater... That's not even counting the dozen awakened ones...' A sharp tinge of greed spread through his thoughts, but it was quickly extinguished by logic.
'No need to get salty about it. It's not like I could have used them anyway, right?' he rationalized with a quiet scoff as he walked back to the cohort's side, ready to continue their trek to a resting spot.
'After all, an ability like that would only be useful if you had the opportunity to form more than one Soul Core...' A completely deadpan look suddenly spread across his features as Zachary tracked that logic to its natural conclusion. 'An ability intrinsically related to Divine Aspects...'
A bitter grimace twisted his already marred visage. At the end of the day, there actually was a reason to be salty.
After a couple of hours—and luckily no more encounters with the iron spiders—just as the sky was beginning to bleed deep, ominous scarlet hues, the cohort finally arrived at their destination. Standing before them was a weathered, ancient white marble archway that spoke of the countless eons it had witnessed.
Zachary shook his head in quiet defeat at the mere idea of more climbing, and judging by the faint, muffled groans trailing behind him, it appeared he wasn't the only one who felt that way. But this close to a proper sanctuary, and with the dark tide of the black sea about to rise, the cohort had to swallow their grumbles and begin scaling the ancient stone.
Once safely atop the white arch, Zachary watched the dark sea surge forward, completely drowning the labyrinth beneath them. Across the flat surface, Effie was already pulling strips of dried, smoked meat out of her bottomless sack. Nephis was in charge of distributing each portion; unable to light a fire to cook their hunt in the dark, they had to distribute their dry rations evenly.
But the tasteless, leathery meat wasn't what made Zachary raise an eyebrow. It was the fact that everyone ate in total, suffocating silence, refusing to throw a single one of their obvious questions at him. Biting off a piece of the meat and passing around the Endless Spring, he quickly deduced the answer.
Finally being allowed to rest was taking every single ounce of attention their weary minds possessed. They could always interrogate him tomorrow... After all, where would he even go?
Snickering softly at the thought, Zachary lightly touched his injured arm beneath the cloth, receiving the exact same agonizing feedback he had experienced earlier. With the sheer depth and quantity of the puncture wounds, and considering Blood Weave was entirely occupied refilling his blood volume, it was going to take a considerable amount of time for him to heal naturally.
A sudden, violent tremble appeared in his lower lip, which he immediately stopped by biting down hard with his teeth. 'Am I going to have to do it again?'
With that grim question in mind, a resolute, steady glow appeared in his crimson eye.
The cohort finished their meal only a few minutes later, and before anyone could speak up, Zachary volunteered himself for the first watch. Caster looked at him for a brief, suspicious second, but after Nephis quickly nodded her agreement, no one opposed the idea.
An hour bled away. Making absolutely certain that nobody else was awake, Zachary quietly crawled to the far edge of the marble arch, well away from the sleeping cohort.
Sitting cross-legged, he unfastened the leather bands of his sleeve, carefully sliding his injured arm out of the mantle to reveal the heavily scarred, bloody, and punctured flesh. A second later, Ender's Solace materialized in his right hand amid a brief flurry of dark sparks.
"Fuuu..." Zachary breathed deeply, fighting to control a frantic, full-body trembling that threatened to rip through his back. A long second passed, and finally, a nervous, breathless laugh escaped his lips. 'Once again? Really?'
A shaky breath escaped him... He was about to manually cauterize his own wounds. Again.
Blood Weave was completely maxed out just trying to manufacture new blood, meaning he had to close these external injuries himself to prepare for any unexpected layout shift in the Labyrinth. But this raised another problem: how was he supposed to generate enough heat if he couldn't light a physical fire in the dark?
Well, he had actually deduced the answer after witnessing the violent interaction between Thunder Song and the steel spider wires. It was quite simple, really; despite his Legacy being fueled by soul essence, it still interacted with the physical laws of the world once manifested.
Taking the makeshift knife out of his pouch, Zachary pressed the flat of its blade firmly against the base of Ender's Solace. Controlling the absolute lowest output he could possibly channel through his sword, Zachary focused entirely on the shape of his Soul.
And he changed its frequency.
A sudden, muffled buzzing sound vibrated from the blade, but no dangerous, arching lightning followed. All this time, Zachary had focused entirely on maximizing the electrical voltage of Thunder Song for raw, destructive damage. But that wasn't what he needed right now. Focusing entirely on the stream of essence, he concentrated the energy directly at the point of contact between the two pieces of steel.
The electric current of his Legacy traveled across the metal, and the natural electrical resistance of the crude knife's material instantly transformed that energy into localized heat. Little by little, the makeshift knife began losing its cold, metallic sheen, turning hotter and hotter until a dull, dangerous orange glow began radiating from the steel.
'Can't believe it... who would think I'd end up using my Legacy as a makeshift electric stove.'
But just as Zachary lampooned his own situation with a silent chuckle, a faint rustle echoed from behind him.
Soft, deliberate footsteps walked steadily in his direction. Even without turning his head, he recognized the rhythm instantly. And yet, he didn't freeze, nor did he stop his task.
"What is that lightning, Zach?" Nephis's soft voice drifted from his back. It was steady, quiet, and intensely focused, but there was a faint, deeply buried emotion bleeding through the cracks of her tone.
Zachary scoffed softly at the question. "A curious one, aren't you?"
Even without turning, he could easily picture the deep frown pinching her features as she spoke.
"Of course I have to be. You come back months later... and you're suddenly wielding a power I have never seen." She breathed deeply, her tone shifting into a sharp, professional register she rarely used with him. "You know exactly what's at stake in this mission, Zach. I need to have everything under control to make sure we make it out."
He didn't answer for a long moment, focusing his attention instead on the glowing knife in his hand. Despite its dull orange luminescence, the radiant heat emanated from the steel wasn't bright enough to pierce through the thick, oppressive darkness of the night.
Without waiting for his response, or perhaps mistaking his silence as reluctance, Nephis continued. "It isn't your Aspect... You would have shown it already if it was." Her tone softened slightly, entering a space of quiet speculation. "Perhaps a Memory... They are extremely rare, but there exist specialized Memories that can imbue other weapons, granting them external power."
Zachary's crimson eye widened slightly at her words. His mind instantly flashed to the description of the Nameless Sun, the deadly Memory obtained from the Crimson Terror, and how perfectly it fit the exact narrative Nephis had just laid out.
'It's... actually quite plausible,' Zachary considered rapidly.
After all, the cohort had only witnessed him channeling the lightning through his blade, and it was technically true that he only ever cast it through Ender's Solace. In all the high-octane frenzy of the catacombs, they hadn't been in a position to see the subtle detail of the leeches exploding from within his own veins. If he used her theory, the only thing left would be carefully phrasing the explanation to navigate the strict, lingering restrictions of the Penance of Truth.
But just as the thought fully formed, it shattered instantly. Zachary noticed something.
It was usually glossed over because of her detached demeanor, but Nephis was an exceptionally perceptive person. She had noticed the exact way he deflected her question the first time she pressed him after crossing the chasm, and he was doing it again right now. If it were something as mechanically straightforward to explain as a rare Memory, he would have used that excuse from the very beginning to save himself the headache.
And yet, she was still offering it to him as an easy option. Despite suspecting it wasn't the actual truth, Nephis was deliberately throwing him a lifeline—not for her own sake, but to give him a plausible lie to feed the cohort when they inevitably demanded answers tomorrow. She was giving him a way out without expecting him to bare his soul.
Zachary parted his lips, licking the dry skin before attempting to formulate a response, but no words came out. A quiet snicker escaped him—not the usual, roguish grin that defined his antics, but something softer. Something entirely new.
A long, heavy silence stretched between them. The heated knife continued to glow brightly in the dark, casting long, erratic shadows across his marred face that completely obscured his expression. But after a quiet heartbeat, he finally spoke, his voice carrying a profound, genuine exhaustion.
"It's my Aspect Legacy... I discovered it while fighting in the Ruins."
As if the monumental revelation of a mere Sleeper unlocking a Legacy didn't shock her in the slightest, Nephis simply nodded her head once into the dark. "I see."
She didn't say anything more, and neither did Zachary. A deep silence stretched between them, but it no longer carried the sharp tension that had been there before. But as if breaking a spell, Zachary shattered the quiet by plunging the blazing knife directly into his injured shoulder.
Nephis flinched at the sudden action, her stoic composure momentarily cracking before transforming instantly into a confused, tight frown as the sickening sound of sizzling skin hissed into the night air. Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood just to contain a pained groan from escaping, Zachary pressed the glowing steel harder against his flesh, forcing the open puncture wounds to fuse shut so Blood Weave could focus its processing power entirely on his internal biology.
He was done a couple of seconds later. Pulling the knife away from his shoulder with a wet, sticky peel, he pressed the flat of the metal back against the base of Ender's Solace to conduct another wave of localized heat.
"Fuuu..." A long, ragged breath pushed past his trembling lips before he shook his head with a quiet, self-deprecating smirk. He would never get used to this.
Feeling the piercing, unblinking gaze of Changing Star boring into the side of his face, Zachary chuckled softly. Taking another stabilizing breath, he spoke without turning back to meet her eyes. "Does it feel this way for you?"
He was talking about her Flaw—a dark, burning question that had been etched into his mind since his solitary calvary inside the ruined cathedral.
Looking at his freshly cauterized shoulder intensely for a long second, Nephis simply shook her head. "Worse."
He didn't feel particularly surprised by the statement. Their agonies came from entirely different origins, after all. While he was simply burning his physical vessel, Nephis was burning her actual soul from the inside out every single time she reached for her flames.
"Figures," Zachary answered simply. He gripped the handle of the blazing knife, and this time, he aimed the glowing edge down toward the countless circular bite marks adorning the entire length of his left arm.
But just as he was about to drive the searing blade into the deepest puncture, Nephis suddenly knelt beside him on the cold marble, her pale hand reaching out to firmly grasp his wrist. He immediately pulled his arm away from her touch, finally turning his head to look her dead in the eye while shaking his head firmly.
"Don't."
The word came out significantly harder and sharper than he had intended. Hearing his continued, absolute refusal of her divine healing, a deep, almost angry scowl spread across her pristine features.
"Why are you so adamant about refusing my healing?" Nephis asked. Despite her voice remaining flat, a dangerous, low baritone accompanied her words. "Let me heal you, Zach... I can even bring your eye back."
She didn't show it openly, but she had been profoundly shocked by the sight of Zachary burning his own injuries with such casual, calculated detachment. She had stated that it couldn't compare to the constant agony her Flaw brought her, and yet it was mathematically obvious that manual cauterization wasn't something a normal human went through willingly—especially when sitting directly next to someone who could erase those injuries in the blink of an eye.
Nephis was extremely self-aware; she knew she was far from the human norm. But she also knew that one didn't simply "get used" to pain. Seeing Zachary perform such a horrific action so normally touched something raw deep inside her.
But his next words shattered her rising concern instantly.
"No thanks." He shook his head, offering a low, tired chuckle.
Utterly unable to comprehend his refusal, her frown deepened into a display of clear, rising annoyance. "Why? I don't understand..." Then, her gray eyes flashed with a sudden realization, her voice dropping to a muted whisper. "Is it because you don't want to see me endure the pain of my Flaw? I can manage—"
"It isn't because of that," Zachary interrupted instantly, throwing a bucket of ice water onto her theory. "I know you're strong, Neph. This much pain won't stop you."
"Then why?" she pressed, her voice rising just enough to strain against the quiet boundaries of the sleeping camp. "Don't tell me this is simply a matter of pride. Do you look at the wounds you receive as some sort of trophies meant to be kept?"
Those simple words struck a nerve Zachary had been hiding for a very long time, causing his face to twist into an expression of clear contempt and disgust. Clenching the handle of the knife harder until his knuckles turned white, he spat with poorly contained emotion.
"Pride? In these hideous things? Don't make me laugh."
Nephis opened her gray eyes wide at the sudden, venomous outburst. Zachary took a deep, steadying breath, consciously forcing his composure back into place.
"On the contrary, Neph... I absolutely despise these things," he continued, his voice dropping back into a softer, hollow register. "If this were any other situation, I would accept your offer gladly... But I can't."
Nephis raised an eyebrow, entirely unable to grasp what he was getting at. Looking at her flawless, unmarred features, a deep, heavy sigh escaped his lips. Zachary remembered the first time he had looked at his own reflection in athe broken mirror back at the cathedral, right after waking from his self-imposed torture—he remembered the profound shame and disgust he felt looking at the ruined state of his own skin.
Looking back up at Nephis, seeing that despite her craving for understanding she remained completely silent, Zachary closed his remaining eye with a sad, faint smile.
"You have your own goals, right Neph? An endgame for which you are willing to stake absolutely everything." Nephis simply nodded her head once in affirmation, and Zachary grinned without any real emotion. "Well... so do I. But contrary to you, Neph, I'm treading this path entirely alone."
He glanced back at the sleeping shapes of the cohort for a brief second before adding silently, "I cannot make mistakes, Neph. I cannot doubt. I cannot collapse. I cannot fail... I cannot lose."
He looked back at her, his single crimson eye burning with a resolute, terrifying expression.
"I have to win."
Looking down at his bare arm, tracking the jagged lines of the old scars and fresh burns covering his flesh, Zachary continued. "These scars are not proof of victory. They are not trophies... They are reminders. Proof of how close I have been to failing. Proof of how easily everything I have been fighting for can completely collapse."
Zachary raised his gaze back to her face. She was looking back at him, a profound, unreadable feeling shifting heavily behind the gray of her irises.
"I'm gonna carry this weight until I succeed."
And without waiting for her to formulate an answer, he drove the orange-hot knife directly into his forearm.
The violent sizzle came instantly, the nauseating aroma of scorched flesh immediately assaulting his senses. Despite the violent trembling of his jaw and the cold sweat breaking across his brow, Zachary didn't scream. He didn't even whimper.
Nephis looked at him in total, breathless silence. Her mouth opened for a brief fraction of a second as Zachary continued his brutal self-flagellation, but eventually, she closed it. She had absolutely no words left to offer him.
As the glowing blade traveled down the length of his arm, her eyes blazed even brighter than the burning metal in his hand, a deep, unyielding fire etching the grim image of what she was witnessing permanently into her memory. Nephis said nothing more.
And yet, she remained sitting directly by his side in the freezing dark, refusing to look away until Zachary finished his Penance.