The pain changed.
Not dramatically. Not suddenly. But Li Wei noticed it after what might have been another hour of lying motionless in the dirt. The burning, tearing sensation around the wound had shifted into something else. Something tighter.
He focused on the feeling, trying to parse it through the constant background noise of agony. The wound was pulling. Contracting. The flesh around the blade felt like it was trying to close, trying to grip the metal that had impaled him.
The sensation grew more pronounced as he paid attention to it. His body was tightening around the sword, and every small contraction sent fresh spikes of pain radiating outward.
If it keeps doing that, the pressure will become unbearable. The sword will need to come out.
His right hand moved to the hilt again. This time his fingers wrapped around it with more purpose, more intention. He could feel his pulse through his palm where it pressed against the leather grip. Steady. Slow. Impossibly regular for someone with a sword through their chest.
The question had been circling in his mind for hours now, but it had been abstract before. Confused. Now, lying here with his hand on the hilt and his body doing things that made no sense, the question took on a different weight.
He forced himself to think through it systematically, to examine what his body was telling him.
His breathing was shallow but functional. His heart was beating. Slowly, yes, but beating. The blood loss should have rendered him unconscious hours ago, yet his mind remained clear. Agonised, but clear.
He lifted his right hand away from the hilt and held it in front of his face. The fingers trembled slightly. The skin was pale, almost grey in the flat light. He flexed them slowly, watching the tendons move beneath the skin.
Then he pressed two fingers against his own neck, searching for the artery. It took several attempts to find it. When he did, the rhythm surprised him.
Slow. Steady. Maybe forty beats per minute. Possibly less.
A resting heart rate that low should have left him weak and dizzy. Should have made movement nearly impossible. Yet he'd been able to lift his arm. Had been able to turn his head and examine his surroundings.
He let his hand fall back to the ground. His gaze returned to the sword hilt jutting from his chest. The blade had entered just left of centre, missing his heart by perhaps two inches. But the angle meant it had to have punctured his lung.
Had to have damaged major blood vessels. He should be drowning in his own blood. Should be choking on it.
But his breathing, while painful and restricted, was clear. No gurgling. No wet sounds. Just the scrape of air moving through a throat gone dry from screaming.
The body was dead. This body had to have been dead when I woke up.
The name came unbidden. Kael. He didn't know where it had come from or why it felt significant, but it sat in his mind with the weight of truth. This wasn't his body. It was Kael's body. And Kael had died here with everyone else.
So why was he moving? Why was he breathing?
I'm not being healed.
The realisation struck him with cold clarity. Whatever was happening to him, it wasn't regeneration in any beneficial sense. His wound hadn't closed. His strength hadn't returned. He felt no surge of vitality, no rush of energy.
The flesh tightening around the sword wasn't healing. It was just happening. Mindless. Mechanical. His body was performing the basic functions of life without any of the actual life to back it up.
He was simply being maintained. Like a corpse that didn't know it was dead yet.
His fingers dug into the dirt beside him. The sensation was distant, muted, as if the nerves in his hand were only half-functional. No answer came to his unspoken questions. The sky remained grey and indifferent. The bodies around him remained still.
He tested his left arm again, trying to move it more deliberately this time. It shifted slightly, responding to his will, but the movement was weak. Uncoordinated. Like he was operating a puppet with half the strings cut.
He tried his legs next. His right foot moved when he concentrated on it, toes flexing inside whatever crude boot he was wearing. His left leg responded less readily, the movement sluggish and incomplete.
I could maybe crawl. If I had to. If I could get the sword out.
But crawl where? To what end? The village was dead. There was no one to help him. No supplies. No shelter that hadn't already been ransacked or burned.
He was trapped here not by the sword but by the simple fact that there was nowhere to go.
The flesh around the wound contracted again, tighter this time. He gasped, the sudden pressure driving the air from his lungs. His back arched involuntarily, and the movement shifted the blade inside him.
"Ahh—!"
The cry escaped before he could stop it. Fresh agony bloomed outward from the wound, white-hot and all-consuming. His vision darkened at the edges.
He forced himself to breathe through it, to ride out the wave of pain until it subsided back to its baseline level of unbearable. When his vision cleared, he was staring at the sky again.
The sword had to come out. But would removing it actually kill him? He'd been lying here for hours with a sword through his chest. No food. No water. Massive blood loss. And he was still here. Still conscious. Still feeling everything.
The thought should have been comforting. Should have sparked some kind of hope. Instead, it filled him with a creeping dread that settled into his bones like ice.
He imagined lying here for days. Weeks. Months. Pinned to the ground by a sword he was too weak to remove, feeling his body tighten around it slowly and endlessly, the pain never fading, never ending, just continuing on and on while his mind remained trapped inside a corpse that refused to stop.
His breathing quickened. The panic he'd been holding at bay for hours surged up suddenly, overwhelming and absolute.
His right hand shot to the hilt again, gripping it hard enough that his palm screamed in protest. He pulled.
The pain was immediate and catastrophic. It felt like he was tearing himself open from the inside. Like every nerve in his chest was being ripped apart simultaneously. He screamed, the sound raw and broken, but he didn't stop pulling.
The blade shifted. Maybe an inch. Maybe less. But it moved.
Fresh blood welled up around the entry wound, hot and immediate. He could feel it soaking through his shirt, could feel the way it poured down his side to pool beneath him. He pulled harder.
The blade shifted again. Two inches now. Maybe three. But the pain was beyond anything he'd experienced before. It obliterated thought. Obliterated everything except the singular, animalistic need to make it stop.
His grip loosened. His hand fell away.
The sword remained lodged in his chest, withdrawn slightly from where it had been but still buried deep. Still killing him slowly.
Li Wei lay there, gasping and shaking, fresh blood spreading beneath him. The attempt had failed. He lacked the strength. Lacked the will to endure that level of pain long enough to finish the job.
The realisation brought no relief. No acceptance. Just a deep, hollow despair that swallowed everything else.
He closed his eyes.
The wound continued to tighten around the blade.