Silent Body, Screaming Mind

The air stung with the bite of alcohol and sterilizer, a sour-clean scent that clung to everything.

Machines hummed and clicked beside me, keeping rhythm where my heart would not, forcing air into lungs that had long ago stopped obeying me. I knew what I was lying in was not a bed. It was a coffin, and I was already inside it.

“He’s draining us dry,” my father said. His voice was low but it cut like glass. “There’s no point anymore. He should have flatlined months ago.”

My mother’s reply was softer, but it carried no mercy. “He would not want to live like this. We cannot keep wasting money.”

Money. That was all I had become to them.

Only one voice stood against it.

“You do not know that,” my sister cried. Her hands wrapped around mine, trembling but warm, desperate enough to almost pull me back into the world. “Ken is still here. He is. I can feel it. Please… do not give up on him.”

I wanted to hold her back. To tell her she was right. I was still here. Screaming. Begging. Clawing at the walls of my own flesh. But no sound left my throat.

The doctor’s words came next, steady and clinical, asking for the decision. My parents nodded. My sister sobbed. The switch was thrown.

The machine released one final sigh. The hums fell silent.

A tear slipped from my eye as the world went black.

◇◇◇◇

“My, my. So much begging in that little head.”

The voice was smooth, rich, coaxing me out of the dark. A woman stepped forward, robes flowing like midnight silk. Her beauty was so flawless it hurt to look at her, and her smile shone with grace that felt like sunlight.

For a moment, I thought I was staring at an angel.

“You want life, do you not, Ken?”

I swallowed the fear rising in me. And for the first time since the accident, words came.

“Yes. Please. I spent my whole life studying to save people… and in the end, I could not even save myself. What good are my skills if I cannot use them for anyone? Just let me stand again. Let me try.”

Her eyes glittered with something that looked like kindness. She leaned closer, her fingers brushing my cheek. The touch was cool, yet it carried a softness that felt like a blessing.

“You poor thing. So noble. So pitiful. So perfect.”

Her smile widened, radiant as sunlight breaking through storm clouds.

“Then I will grant you a body no illness can touch. No fever, no plague, no sickness will ever lay claim to you. You will stand. You will breathe. You will carry the strength to save.”

Hope surged inside me. My chest felt lighter than it had in years.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I will not waste this.”

Her laughter followed me as the void split apart.

Light roared into the darkness, searing red and gold. Heat wrapped around me, not burning but reshaping me. For the first time in years, I felt alive.

And then, there was only fire.

With the fire came something else. Whispers pressed into my skull, not voices but fragments of understanding. Words that were not mine, maps of a land I had never seen, the sound of bells in towns I had never walked. The goddess had left me a gift, the most basic knowledge of this world pressed into me all at once.

I staggered as the memories settled. I knew the names of its coin, the sound of its church bells, the sight of its fields. I knew what the beaked masks meant, what the glowing crystals were, how they were wielded to fight infection. Enough to stand. Enough to move. Not enough to belong.

And then the fire faded, leaving me on the grass under a sky too perfect to last.

◇◇◇◇

I stood, unsteady but whole, my body obeying every command. My hands closed into fists, steady and strong. My lungs drank deep. No pain. No weakness. No chains.

Children’s laughter carried on the wind. A shepherd guided his animals across a hill. Bells rang faintly from a spire in the distance, calm and steady.

It was peaceful. Too peaceful.

The ground shuddered.

A sound like cloth tearing under strain ripped across the horizon. A line of sickly green light split the air, jagged and wrong.

The laughter faltered. Faces turned toward the outskirts. A silence spread across the fields.

And then the world began to pour through the wound.

Mist billowed out first, rolling low across the grass, thick and choking. It spread quickly, clouding the fields in a haze the color of bile. Through it came shadows. Shapes dragged themselves forward, swollen and unnatural, their outlines twitching and snapping as if their limbs bent the wrong way. The mist clung to them, masking every detail except the silhouettes of something vaguely human that should not be.

When they moved, the air soured. Each step carried the stink of rot and phlegm, a reek that stung the back of the throat. Their mouths opened wide inside the fog, shrieks carrying the sound of coughs and retches.

The Sephis.

The bells rang again. No longer gentle. An alarm.

Doors slammed. Shouts rose. Mothers pulled children inside.

Figures in long coats rushed from the heart of the town, their beaked masks glinting in the dim light. Fire crystals burned in their hands, vomiting jets of flame into the horde. Heat and rot collided, smoke thickening the fog until the world itself seemed to choke.

The creatures slammed against a barricade where villagers crowded inside a shelter. The mist rolled with them, swallowing the line of defense, making it almost impossible to see more than the glow of fire cutting through the haze. For every shadow that burned, more stumbled from the rift.

A boy tripped. His small body rolled toward a dark silhouette dragging itself forward.

I moved.

My body reacted faster than thought. I was already running, pulling him into my arms, pressing him against my chest as a spray of flame shot past. For an instant the mist lit up, and I saw the Sephis clearly enough to watch it collapse into cinders.

The boy’s fists clung to my shirt. His mother screamed his name. I pushed him into her arms, and she sobbed against his hair.

I felt eyes on me through the fog. Dozens of them. The plague doctors, their masks glinting faintly in the haze. Their stares lingered too long on my steady breathing and my unshaking hands.

Something about me was wrong. They knew it.

I had known that look my entire life.

Another shadow surged forward. I turned too late. Its claws tore across my arm. Pain flared hot and sharp. Blood welled, then stopped almost at once. My skin drew itself closed, knitting smooth in seconds as though nothing had happened.

The fire from the doctors faltered. Even through the fog I could feel their stares.

“It is sealing…” someone whispered.

But it did not stop. The wound continued to repair itself, too quick, too clean.

From behind the line came a new voice. Calm. Level. Cold.

“Hold him.”

A figure stepped into view, her outline steady in the mist. She lifted a glass lens etched with pale sigils. It glowed faintly as she peered through, her expression sharpening into something that was no longer neutral.

“Cells dividing faster than they should. His tissue is closing at the microscopic level.”

Her words carried. Even muffled by the plague mist, I felt the ripple of unease through the line of doctors.

Another shadow emerged, larger than the rest, its bulk nearly invisible in the haze. I lifted the fallen fire crystal. Heat surged into my palm, alive and eager.

This time I did not just burn. I pictured infection boiling away under flame. I aimed straight at the core of the silhouette.

The crystal erupted. Fire lanced through the mist, searing a path clear across the field. For a single breath the haze burned back, revealing the Sephis writhing as its body turned to ash. Then the fog closed in again, swallowing the field.

Silence rippled through the barricade.

And then a new flame rose, brighter than the rest.

Through the fog stepped a girl, her hair catching the glow like pale fire, her eyes burning hotter than any crystal. Flame curled easily along her hand, not forced from a stone but summoned as if it belonged to her.

Beside her came another. Dark-haired. Calm. A satchel heavy with vials at her side. Her gaze was sharp and unwavering, the light of her sigil lens still faint against the mist.

Two sisters.

The blonde crouched low, firelight spilling across me, her heat rolling like a forge.

“You do not look sick. What are you?”

My throat tightened. The crystal still pulsed in my hand.

The dark-haired sister’s voice was quieter, but sharper. “Another experiment, perhaps. If he does not fall ill, he may be useful.”

The blonde’s eyes narrowed. Her flames flared, licking higher into the fog.

“Useful or not, we will know soon enough.”

The haze swirled around them, but their presence burned through it, sharp and undeniable.

My second life had only just begun.

And already, I was a test subject.

Epilogue — The Balcony

When Ken was gone, the goddess drifted into a hall of dark marble. The air here was still, heavy, as though even sound feared to move. Other goddesses sat in silence, their eyes following her every step.

She smiled as though she carried a secret.

“He was so grateful,” she said softly, almost with a laugh in her throat. “Begging me to let him stand again, to heal, to save. He thanked me. Imagine that. He thanked me.”

One of the goddesses leaned forward, her expression grave. “You twisted his wish. You sent him into Caldrin, the plague city. You know he cannot possibly save them.”

“That is the point.” The cruel goddess’s laugh rang against the marble, sharp enough to splinter. “I gave him what he wanted. A body that will never fall ill. He will walk among the dying and breathe their sickness without a single cough. He will try with all his heart. And he will fail, again and again.”

Her eyes glittered as she spread her hands, as if revealing a favorite parable.

“In every world there is some variation of the tale of the immortal man and the snail. A man cursed to live forever, always pursued by a single slow creature. If it ever reaches him, he dies. It is a story of futility, of dread, of knowing that no matter how far he runs, his end inches closer.”

Her smile curved wider, too wide, beautiful and monstrous all at once.

“I found myself wondering what might happen if the man was real, and the snail was replaced with something far worse. What if he stood perfect, untouchable, while the rest of the world rotted around him? Would he still run, or would he watch everything die until he stood as the last remaining human, mocked by his own survival?”

Her voice lowered, her tone almost tender.

“That is the curse I gave him. A healer who cannot fall ill. A savior who must outlive every failure, every plague, every friend who dies choking in the dark.”

Another goddess shook her head, her voice quiet. “Why would you do this?”

The cruel goddess tilted her chin, her smile stretching into something almost gleeful.

“Because I was bored. And because it amuses me.”

Her laughter filled the chamber until even the shadows seemed to shrink back from her voice.