Veyne flexed his new body, sweeping pale‑green hair out of his eyes as he catalogued supplies. The lab smelled of dust and old magic.
"The air's thinning. I'll have less than an hour if I don't clear the entrance," he muttered.
He collected bits and pieces from around the lab and laid out his haul: a single red crystal pulsing with fire‑essence, the dessicated corpse of an undead beetle, a dire‑wolf fang, a vial of century‑rotted fruit, a craftsman's hammer, a broken cauldron—and his severed right arm.
"Not enough to blast four meters of stone," he said. Then he thought like the necromancer he was. If he couldn't blast the entrance, maybe he could blast the chimney.
He etched a formula into the wall with the fang, drawing breath as his lungs protested the stale air. "If I combine the fire crystal, dead beetle and fermented alcohol, crush them together, the beetle's lingering magic should trigger ignition. Not a full breach, but it can clear the chimney—if I aim up." Air thinned; planning sharpened him.
He tied hairs into a tiny rope, fastened it to the hammer and suspended it above the vial. He positioned the cauldron beneath the hearth, heart racing. One shot.
"Three… two… one."
KABOOM.
Stone and dust exploded upward. Veyne's knees hit cold earth as rubble poured from the chimney. Fresh air slammed his face. He grabbed his arm, shimmed into the shaft and climbed toward the surface.
Sunlight struck his face. The forest smelled alive. It had been a century, yet the trees felt the same. He smiled, raw and hungry.
"Time to get to work."
The old entrance was buried under packed earth. He resolved to set a temporary base above ground while he fixed the arm. Three days of scavenging later he had a crude hovel of branches and stones, roots and berries for food, and a three‑pronged spear that would do for now. The body made basic survival clumsy; hunting mocked him.
On the second day he found it: an elder tree, three times taller than the rest. Its sap would have lingering magical essence—perfect. He marked the place, returned to camp, and began rune‑carving on the skeletal arm. Hours passed, each notch precise, each line an invitation for magic.
Back at the elder tree, he hacked a shallow wound and collected sticky, faintly luminescent sap. He coated the carved bones; the runes pulsed with a faint glow as the tree's essence bled in. He waited.
Sap absorbed. A faint shimmer ticked along the runes. No time to be cautious—he had to force the bind. He sharpened the arm's tip against rock, tore a clump of sap, and snarled.
Rubbing sap over his shoulder nub, he clamped a stick in his teeth, closed his eyes, and drove the bone into the socket. Pain flared bright and white. He wrapped fresh vines tight around the join until the burning dully subsided.
It felt barbaric but it would do for now.
The improvised graft hummed faintly with the elder tree's magic, and the runes throbbed like a heartbeat. Veyne let the wound knit, breathing the forest in and tasting the slow return of strength.
"Compared to waking up in this corpse, this is nothing," he told himself, flexing the new arm until ligaments protested. A plan formed in the quiet: rebuild, relearn, and hunt them down.
He settled into his crude camp, letting the forest mask his work. One step closer. One more wound healed. One more secret rediscovered. The restart had begun.