Alone on his floating island, suspended amid millions of burning stars, Gil stared at his hands in disbelief. His mind reeled, completely unable to process what was happening right in front of his eyes.
First, he had lost his arm in the physical world.
Now, it was right here, attached to his shoulder.
He pinched himself. He rubbed his wrists together. He reached over with his right hand, gripping his left forearm, squeezing the skin, tracing the knuckles, frantically testing to see if this was just a cruel, elaborate hallucination born of his own fractured psyche.
But the tactile feeling was absolute. The arm was there. It was real.
A surge of overwhelming emotion erupted from deep inside his chest. If this phantom form were truly human, he would have wept tears of pure joy. Instead, as the raw emotion burst through his soul, golden droplets—glowing like molten sunlight—spilled from his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, vanishing into the celestial soil beneath him.
I got it back... Wait, did I? Is it really back?
He sat there in the silence, caught in a chaotic storm of incredulity, sudden bliss, and utter confusion.
Then, a sudden wave of sheer embarrassment washed over him. Just five seconds ago, he had been rolling around on the ground, screaming like a lunatic and swearing bloody vengeance on Hector and his entire organization.
His hatred for them hadn't disappeared—far from it. But the catastrophic, permanent loss that had driven him to absolute despair a moment ago had suddenly been overturned, leaving his previous outburst feeling almost absurdly dramatic.
Forcing his ragged breathing to slow down, Gil willed himself to be calm. He stared intently at his left hand.
Work, damn it. Move.
He flexed his fingers. One by one. Index, middle, ring, pinky, thumb. He rotated his wrist, bent his elbow, and swung his shoulder through its full range of motion. The response was instantaneous, fluid, and perfectly natural. The arm was indisputably, miraculously whole.
If it's here... does that mean my body on the outside changed too? Did it regenerate while I was sleeping?
Even as the wild hope surged in his chest, a heavy, realistic intuition told him not to get his hopes up too high. But hoping against all logic, he crossed his legs on the cosmic soil, closed his eyes, and exerted a small effort of focus.
In a flash, his ethereal silhouette dissolved from the starry realm.
His eyes snapped open in the physical world.
He was back in the cold, dimly lit underground hall, surrounded by the quiet breathing and faint shifting of the other captives.
Ignoring the dark room completely, Gil's heart hammered violently against his ribs as he raised his rough blanket with his right hand and looked down at his left side.
His stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
The left sleeve of his shirt remained empty, neatly pinned against a truncated shoulder wrapped in clean linen.
I knew it... he thought, a bitter, dull ache throbbing in his chest.
It would have been a gargantuan lie to say he wasn't disappointed.
Of course it wouldn't be that easy. His physical arm was still gone. Whatever miraculous power governed that starry inner sanctuary, it hadn't automatically bled out into his flesh and bone.
The limb only existed inside this mindscape of sort.
Taking a long, heavy breath, Gil closed his eyes once more. He focused his mind on the hidden path, reaching for the sanctuary where he was still whole.
This time, the transition was almost instantaneous. In the blink of an eye, the cold stone hall vanished, replaced by the endless expanse of stars, the quiet floating island, and the soft, radiant glow of his burning golden orb.
He immediately looked down at his left hand. It was there, resting lightly against his knee.
He gazed intensely at it, terrified that it would disappear if he looked away for even a second.
Despite everything—despite the brutal, unforgiving reality waiting for him back in the physical world—a faint, genuine smile broke across his face.
It's not how I imagined getting it back...
He took a deep, trembling breath, flexing his left fingers against the starry dirt, letting the sensation of wholeness wash over him.
...but i am glad it's there.... even if only there.
People always said you never truly appreciate what you have until it's gone.
Gil hadn't spent a long time as an amputee in the physical world, yet in that short span of terrifying reality, he had learned the excruciating truth of those words.
And now, standing whole within his own soul, he realized something even more vital.
This space wasn't just a mental hideaway—it was proof that the core of who he was remained unbroken. Hector could tear away his flesh, but he couldn't touch this place. He couldn't touch his spirit.
More than ever, a quiet, dangerous resolve crystallized within Gil's mind. He had his sanctuary. He had his strength. And sooner or later, he would figure out how to bridge the gap between this inner world and the outer one—and make every last one of those bastards pay for what they had taken from him.
But all of this could wait a bit longer. It wouldn't be settled overnight, and rushing in blindly would only get him killed.
Lying flat on the cosmic soil of his floating island, staring up at the endless sea of burning stars, Gil felt a profound stillness settle over his spirit.
Right now, the most important thing was simply to rest.
Earlier, he had wanted to dissect his powers, to analyze every strange phenomenon occurring in this realm, to understand the mechanics of the golden tree—but even that felt like too much work now.
He didn't want to think about Hector.
He didn't want to dwell on his mangled flesh in the real world, or the stifling, pitiful stares and hidden glee of the other survivors.
He didn't want to dread whatever horrific "training" awaited them at sunrise.
He just wanted to lie here, stare into the infinite expanse, and completely empty his mind.
He wanted to hoard this fragile, beautiful moment of absolute peace for as long as it would last.
A second melted into a minute.
A minute stretched into an hour. Then two.
Time held no real meaning in this place. He had no idea if a century in this celestial expanse equaled a single breath in the stone hall below, or if time flowed at the exact same pace.
All he knew was that the crushing weight in his chest had lightened significantly, and the deep, soul-weary exhaustion that had threatened to break him earlier was rapidly fading away.
Even his phantom mind felt sharp, restored, and clear.
Yet, as much as he felt rested, a lingering reluctance held him back from returning to the physical world right away.
Moving back to reality meant waking up to a dark cell, a missing physical arm, and a room full of despair.
Not yet, he thought, slowly sitting up on the starry dirt and flexing his intact left fingers against his knee. Since I'm in this sanctuary, I might as well figure out how it actually works.
He still knew next to nothing about this place, its limits, or its true connection to his physical body. And if he was going to survive tomorrow's trials, he needed every single advantage he could wring out of this strange, starry void.
"Let's start with something simple," he murmured into the cosmic quiet.
Sitting cross-legged under the burning canopy of his golden tree, Gil closed his eyes and summoned the memory of his recent battle—recalling the exact, razor-sharp instinct he had felt when invaders dared to step foot into his sanctuary.
Clang!
The sharp metallic echo rang out through the void. In an instant, heavy, shadowy chains materialized around his arms, coiling neatly around his forearms like iron snakes.
With a simple flicker of his will, they reacted. He sent one sweeping to the right, whipped another forward through the air, and commanded a third to coil tightly around his torso like armor.
He controlled them with terrifying ease.
They weren't inanimate tools or conjured weapons; they felt like natural extensions of his own nerves, moving as effortlessly as breathing.
A grim sense of satisfaction washed over him.
Next, he turned his focus to his second weapon—the volatile, jagged crimson shards he had unleashed in his fury.
He closed his eyes, drawing on the memory of that sharp, crimson power, and willed them to manifest. With a harsh hum, dozens of deep red, crystal-like thorns materialized in the air around him, hovering in a jagged halo.
At first glance, it seemed like a success.
But as Gil held them suspended in the void, his brow furrowed.
Something was deeply, fundamentally off.
The chains felt alive, fluid, and completely obedient to his thoughts. But these red shards felt stagnant, brittle, and oddly hollow. When he tried to command them to dart forward, they lurked sluggishly, lacking the violent, explosive speed they had demonstrated during the fight.
It was like trying to fire a cannon charged with wet gunpowder.
What's going on this time? Gil thought, staring intently at the hovering crimson spikes as their red light flickered unsteadily against the cosmic dirt.
Why won't they respond the way they did before?