Chapter 27: Flesh Anchor and Blood Thread

Silas's head lay on the mossy stone. Blood flooded the floor. The cheers of hundreds of mercenary assassins echoed, bouncing off the phosphor cave walls. An echo of worship for the new predator.

Luka stood straight. His right hand crushed the ruined heart.

Without warning, his gut twisted. His ribs crunched by force.

Luka coughed. Thick black fluid spewed from his mouth. Filthy blood. Rotting slime. Soul erosion struck his internal organs without a warning. The energy combustion from absorbing the Echo Ruler's soul demanded instant payment. His mutated right arm reacted. The thick red scales boiled. His veins twitched wildly, twisting the ulna bone from the inside.

His monster flesh shrank. A forced pull reversed the anatomical form, defying the laws of physics. The process tore skin and muscle, leaving a gaping wound from elbow to wrist. Brick-red muscle fibers were exposed to the cold cave air. The stench of burning meat flared.

Pain. His lungs rejected oxygen. Luka staggered backward. His body struck the rusted throne. He sat hunched, holding his ruined arm.

High-heeled boots approached fast, cutting through the crowd. Rhea.

The maid crashed into the blood puddle lacking care. Her pale hands embraced Luka's shoulders. The lily scent ambushed the monster carcass stench.

"Hold on, My Lord." Rhea's voice trembled full of calculation. Her eyes swept the torn wound. "Your vessel is adjusting. Do not fight the current."

Luka pressed his head throbbing near bursting. His vision blurred. The nerves behind his eyes felt yanked by force. Amidst the dim blue light, a small shadow stepped forward from the crowd of leather-armored assassins.

A girl.

Her body wrapped in dull oversized cotton clothes. Her eyes dead, dimmed lacking a sliver of life light. She stared at the blood puddle around the throne devoid of expression. The girl's hand held a wooden basket containing dirty bandage rolls and an alcohol bottle. She walked looking down. Approaching Luka's arm dripping fresh blood to the stone floor.

The girl reached out.

Slap.

Rhea swatted the hand away. Hard. The girl staggered backward, her basket nearly falling striking a stalagmite.

"Step back, Slave." Rhea's voice hissed. Pure poison dripped from every syllable. The maid's gray eyes sharpened, locking the girl with a gaze cold as ice capable of freezing vocal cords. "A king's blood is not for your filthy hands to touch. How dare you try to soil a prince's skin."

The girl did not argue. She dropped her knees to the wet stone, bowing deep. Her small body trembled faintly. Her shoulders curved inward. The posture of a hunted beast accustomed to being kicked and stomped. She crawled backward into the shadows without a single spoken word, accepting her position as street filth.

Luka stared at the girl.

His chest rumbled. Something struck his respiratory cavity. Not pain from the mutation. It was a highly foreign tightness. Behind the eyes of the resigned bowing girl, Luka's filthy memories thrashed out. An odd resonance crashed into his airways. The trembling girl bowing before him reflected the exact same horror he felt when he first awoke in the rotting Oesterian shack. The reflection of a creature stomped by the world's steel boots. He hated that sight.

The Sin of Wrath kicked Luka's solar plexus.

He gripped Rhea's wrist. Strong until his nails pressed the woman's veins. Forcing the maid to look at him.

"Let her treat me." Luka's voice was hoarse. Slitting the throat.

Rhea tensed. "My Lord, she is merely a filthy slave who does not—"

"Let her." Luka cut his maid's sentence. His teeth ground. He stood, staring straight piercing the woman's manipulation. "That is an order. You, handle the power transition with Vance and this group. Do not make me repeat it."

Rhea fell silent. Her jaw hardened. Her motherly mask cracked a split second before shutting tight again. The maid bowed her head. Yielding. She pivoted her heel. Walking away from the throne toward Vance and Lysandra with an aura of tightly suppressed anger.

Luka stared at the girl. "Take me."

The girl rose. Still looking down. She walked leading, guiding Luka away from the mercenary assassin crowd who stepped aside giving way with reluctant stares.

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The Hollow Syndicate's medical room rested in the lowest mountain alcove. This room lacked exterior windows. Trapped air. The stench of cheap iodine, harsh alcohol, and bed rust clogged the nasal cavity. The stone floor sticky with remnants of past surgeries.

The sole light source was a beeswax candle melting on a clay plate. The small fire flickered blown by the wind from a ventilation gap. Creating long shadows dancing wild ruining the limestone walls.

Luka sat on the edge of the rusted iron bed. The mattress smelled of old blood.

His breaths roared. His right arm rested on a filthy wooden table. His flesh tore open severe. His red muscle fibers twitched refusing to be passive. Blood flowed constant soaking the board, dripping in rhythm to the bottom of the bucket.

The girl—Ciela—stood before him. Her skin deathly pale lacking The Red Ring Sun's light.

Ciela took the dull glass bottle, opening the cork stopper. She poured the cheap alcohol straight onto the torn wound on Luka's arm.

Luka ground his teeth. His neck veins bulged wildly. He gripped the edge of the iron bed until his knuckles turned white. The sting burned his cell tissues like poured hot lava. Ciela provided no anesthetics. Devoid of painkiller luxuries in this mercenary assassin den. Blood mixed with alcohol fluid dripped heavily into the wooden bucket below the table.

Ciela placed the bottle down, grabbing a thick curved needle and a roll of black surgical thread.

Without a warning, she thrust the needle, piercing Luka's rough skin and raw flesh, then pulling it to the other side.

Luka shut his eyes. His jaw creaked hard. His bones endured the tremor.

He stared at the girl's face from close range. Ciela focused her gaze on the torn flesh. The girl's hands felt cold as ice when their skin touched. The temperature of a corpse preserved in frost. Yet, not a single tremor existed on those small fingers. Luka's monster muscles thrashed enduring pain, radiating excess heat, but Ciela's hands worked mathematically. Stable. Cold. Stitching the hard skin without a speck of hesitation. Stitch after stitch closed his flesh tear precisely.

"You are young." Luka's voice broke the suffocating air. Gritty. The friction of injured vocal cords. "How did you end up in this filthy place?"

Ciela did not stop her stitching rhythm. The iron needle pierced the skin. Pulled. Knotted. She ignored the monster blood smearing her fingers.

Her needle movement paused for a moment. The girl stared at the blood puddle on the wooden table with a blank gaze.

"I do not know, My Lord." Ciela answered. Her voice quiet. Hollow.

Luka furrowed his brow. He endured the sting as the needle pierced his flesh again. "Do not know?"

Ciela locked the first thread knot. She took a shallow breath. The scent of rust coated her esophagus.

"One day, I just awoke on the side of a muddy road." The girl's voice flowed sluggish. Laden with formless suffering. "No name. Only a tightness in the chest... and a torturous urge to keep knitting torn flesh."

Luka listened. The heart at his solar plexus throbbed odd. His eye locked onto the girl's dull face.

"As if..." Ciela wiped the remaining blood from Luka's arm using a piece of dirty gauze, her eyes kept staring far piercing the stone wall. "...if I stop stitching other people's wounds, I will forget the face of someone chopped to pieces inside my memory. So I wait in this hell, My Lord... waiting for whose flesh I truly must piece back together."

Ciela pulled the final thread. Finishing her stitches. She bent down, bringing her face closer to Luka's arm, then bit the remaining black thread off using her own teeth.

Luka fell rigid silent.

The girl's sentence pierced his inner defense. Striking the empty space inside his head. The place where the shadows of two twin girls melted to ash due to Law of Erosion hours ago. This girl before him lost her memory. Living in total void and driven by a single instinct. They were the same. Both were mirrors of victims of this world's ruin. For some reason, every pull of this girl's thread seemingly stitched Luka's unraveled sanity.

Luka stared at Ciela. The girl cleaned her needle in silence.

For the first time since he awoke from the table of death, the throb of anger at the base of his brain quieted. The foul stench of Silas's corpse vanished from his mind. His vengeance against Ulric subsided for one full second. Pure calm washed his tense nerves. He did not see a lowly slave. He saw a fragment of life he had to protect from the world's brutality.

I will bring this kingdom out of hell. Luka's mind echoed. The promise of a street executioner finding his remaining humanity.

___

Outside the medical room.

The main cave hall smelled of thick blood. Hundreds of The Hollow Syndicate members stood lined up rigid. Awaiting commands. Rhea twisted her body turning her back to the medical tunnel. The woman's face was hard. Her jaw locked tight. The maid's expression was sour. Her plan to monopolize the prince's reason met a slight obstacle from a filthy slave lacking a name. She hated unexpected variables.

Vance stepped forward. The shark-jawed man bowed in respect before Rhea, realizing who truly held the monster's chain. Lysandra followed from behind, sheathing her twin daggers in a silent motion.

"The Prince demands your unconditional loyalty." Rhea's voice cleaved the silence. Cold. Lethal. "Clean Silas's corpse. Starting tomorrow, you are no longer mountain rats. We have a kingdom to reclaim."

Vance nodded. Absolute obedience to the newly formed food chain.

Outside the stone mountain. Oesteria's snowstorm wind roared fierce striking the steep cliff walls.

In a stone ventilation gap connecting straight to Luka's medical room, the night darkness shifted.

A pitch-black feathered falcon perched lacking sound. Its sharp talons embedded into the frozen limestone. The bird of prey peeked into the ventilation. Monitoring the interaction inside the medical room from the narrow gap.