The sounds of yelling were long gone now.
Seventeen just stared at the ceiling, his body hanging limp in the air as Myers carried him through the corridor. His arms drifted slightly with each step, swaying like they didn't belong to him.
His mind didn't register the movement.
It didn't register much of anything.
Inside his head, everything was quiet.
Not peaceful.
Not calm.
Just… switched off.
The pain was there somewhere.
Buzzing under the skin like a sound behind a wall.
He could feel it trying to reach him but never fully getting through.
His body felt far away, like he was watching someone else be carried.
Myers glanced back at the boy's body. Mangled wasn't even the right word. It looked wrong, like every bone in him had decided they were optional. His skin was drenched in red and blue blood. Sand clung to him stubbornly, sticking like a second, filthy skin.
Bruises and cuts covered what used to be legs. The nails on his feet were broken, curling and barely hanging on, most already torn off. His left wrist was crushed purple with clear, deep circular indentations where the Ogrith's fingers had clamped down. His right arm swung freely, dragging back and forth like a snapped chain. His hand was a ruined mess. Knuckles dark purple and split, the webbing between thumb and pointer torn open, the thumb hanging by stubborn flesh.
Blood from his torn-open back dripped steadily onto the stone, echoing through the corridor.
And yet, when Myers stared at him, the boy seemed calm.
Not peaceful.
Not relaxed.
Just quiet.
Shallow breathing.
Eyes pointed up at the ceiling like he wasn't entirely in his body.
Because he wasn't.
He wasn't strong.
He wasn't holding it together.
He was gone.
Myers shook his head once and kept walking.
The moment the hinges groaned, Seventeen finally spoke.
His voice was flat. Almost uncaring.
Like the words belonged to someone else and his mouth was borrowing them.
His eyes didn't move, but his mouth did. "When did you trade me…"
Myers didn't turn as he carried him inside.
"I never did," he said plainly. "I lied. I told him I got permission from the pit owner."
He walked to his chair, sat, and raised his hand. Seventeen floated forward, weightless. Myers lowered him until the boy settled onto the bed.
Still sitting, he rolled toward the drawers and snapped his fingers. One drawer opened with his hand. Another opened by itself. He pulled out tools, herbs, cloth, salves, placing them onto the small table.
"After the core went into your body," he continued, tone flat, "our lives were tied together whether we wanted them to be or not. I couldn't let Boarn keep you, so I used the pit owner's name. I knew Boarn would fold."
Seventeen didn't respond.
He didn't blink.
He didn't even fully hear the words.
His thoughts drifted like they were sinking underwater.
Myers rubbed ointment onto the bruises. It should have burned like fire. But Seventeen's face didn't twitch. His body didn't even try to pull away. His mind barely registered the sting before it dissolved into the haze swallowing everything.
"Yeah," Myers said, still working, "every pit has an owner. And this one belongs to Magnus."
He stood and grabbed wooden poles and cloth. He placed his hand over Seventeen's destroyed arm and pulsed mana into it.
The bones didn't just crack.
They crushed into each other, grinding and sliding like wet rubber forced through tight fingers.
A deep, wet crunching filled the room. Cartilage grinding, bone scraping bone as the mana shoved each shattered piece back toward where they belonged.
It wasn't a sharp sound.
It was thick.
Meaty.
Wrong.
Like something being kneaded back into shape.
Seventeen's fingertips twitched.
His jaw tightened once.
Then nothing.
He just stared at the ceiling and listened to his body being rearranged like it was happening to a stranger. The sound didn't even reach him right. It felt like someone stirring water miles away.
Myers braced the arm, then moved to the ruined hand. When he pushed mana into it, the bones writhed under the skin like something alive crawling through mud, twisting and slotting back together with sickening resistance.
Still no reaction.
That terrified Myers far more than the wounds.
He moved to the shelf, opened three vials, tapped out pills, dropped them into a larger vial. Blue mana pulsed upward, melting them into liquid.
"Boarn fears Magnus because of a previous incident," he said. "So I knew he wouldn't question anything I claimed."
When the tonic steadied, Myers swirled it until fully mixed, then snapped his fingers again. Seventeen's body lifted slightly, sitting upright with a slow, mechanical stiffness.
"Drink."
Myers placed the vial to his lips. Seventeen tilted his head. The liquid slid onto his tongue, cold, chalky, metallic. He swallowed without thinking.
As the tonic spread, faint glowing lines traced themselves under his skin, his thin blood vessels lighting with a weak green hue. The bruises lightened, then stalled. The glow faded as if it had nothing to hold onto.
"Hm," Myers muttered, studying the boy. "Not very effective."
Seventeen sat there, back straight, eyes empty, breathing slow and shallow.
Calm on the outside.
But nowhere near calm.
His mind had simply retreated so far inside itself that the world felt like it was happening behind a dark sheet.
He breathed only because his body remembered how.
Not because he wanted to.
The light on the wall had shifted when he finally blinked.
Myers turned around, pulling a small leather notebook from his coat. The faint scratch of a pencil filled the room, broken only by the low hum of his muttering as he scribbled notes and observations. He worked methodically, cleaning each tool he'd used, wiping them down with careful precision. Every motion quiet. Controlled.
Behind him, a soft rumble echoed, a hollow, low growl from Seventeen's stomach.
Myers glanced over his shoulder.
The boy was still sitting upright, exactly where he'd left him. Back rigid. Eyes unfocused. Staring through the wall as if it weren't even there.
Myers looked at the clock.
"You hungry?"
Seventeen didn't turn his head. Didn't blink.
He just let out a small grunt, more a sound of acknowledgment than an answer, something automatic that slipped out without thought.
Myers paused.
A tiny, almost invisible hesitation.
Just a flicker, pity, faint but real, crossing his expression before he pushed it away.
"Alright," he said quietly. "I'll be back. Just sit there and rest until I'm back."
When the door shut, the quiet hit him harder than any blow had.
The room didn't feel empty.
It felt distant.
Like he was watching it through thick glass.
His body stayed upright, but it didn't feel like he was the one holding it there.
The weight of his limbs… the ache in his ribs… even the taste of that cold tonic still on his tongue…
It all felt muted.
Blunted.
Too far away to matter.
He looked down at his hands, or tried to.
They didn't feel like his.
They looked like tools someone else had ruined and left behind for him to wear.
A part of him wondered if he should cry.
Another part wondered if he should scream.
But neither sound came.
Nothing came.
Because there was nothing left inside to push it out.
So he just sat there, breathing slow, eyes half-lidded, trapped in a body he couldn't fully feel.
A strange, heavy quiet settled in his skull.
Not peace.
Not rest.
Just… absence.
Like something had switched him off so he wouldn't have to feel anymore.
He recognized this feeling.
This heavy quiet.
This soft, sinking stillness.
He had felt it once before, in Boarn's cell.
When he'd drunk that filthy bottle down to the last burning drop and let his mind slide into the dark.
When his stomach was full for the first time and he had leaned against the wall, ready to let whatever came next take him.
Back then, it had felt like peace.
A small, fragile peace born from giving up.
And now, sitting here in Myers' clinic, staring at nothing, he felt that same quiet settling over him.
The same numbness, the same softness behind the ribs, the same strange warmth that told him:
You can stop now.
You don't have to feel.
It wasn't comforting.
It wasn't welcome.
He wasn't ready to stop this time.
But his body didn't care.
His mind didn't care.
The peace came anyway, creeping in like a memory.
And he hated how easy it was to fall back into it. Back then, peace had meant rest. Now it felt like erasure.
His fingers twitched.
Barely, a small, nervous shift against the rough sheet.
They brushed the seam of his hand, tracing over the thick scar that crossed his thumb. The skin there felt foreign, uneven, the faint ridge where it had been reattached still swollen and hard. He pressed it again. The dull sting crawled up his arm, soft but real.
It anchored him for a moment.
Just enough to remind him he was still here.
The door creaked open.
Metal grinding against metal.
The door's creak dragged him back, sharp and metallic, like a thought snapping in half.
He looked up slowly.
"Sorry it took a while," Myers said, stepping in with a folded bundle under his arm. His tone was steady, almost casual. "There was a longer line than I thought."
He took a few steps closer, the faint scuff of his boots on stone filling the silence. "Here. I got you some new clothes."
Seventeen blinked once, eyes dull but following the sound of Myers' voice.
For a second, he thought Myers had forgotten something.
That was the only reason people came back, when something was missing.
He tried to answer, to ask, but the air caught halfway up his throat.
A small skip.
His chest tightened once before the breath stumbled back in, uneven.
Myers frowned, waiting.
That's when he noticed the boy's fingers, slow, rhythmic, scratching at his forearm.
"You itchy?"
Seventeen blinked, finally aware of it. His fingertips hovered over the mark, skin already red and bruising faintly.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
Myers nodded, turning away to set the clothes down on the table.
"Figured you wouldn't want to wear rags forever. They're plain, but clean."
He turned back to tidy the vials and scraps of cloth still scattered across the table. The soft clinking of glass filled the room, a steady, human sound that made the silence bearable again.
When he moved again, Seventeen noticed the air smelled different. Less like blood, more like dust and metal polish.
The salve on his skin had dried.
He didn't remember when.
Seventeen looked down at the bruise on his arm.
The shape of his own fingers stood out against his skin.
He traced it once, light, wondering when it started.
Then he reached for the clothes without another word.