Cael walked, and walked, and walked through the endless expanse of salt. He had completely lost his sense of direction at this point, not that it mattered anyway. He had no specific place he wanted to reach right now, no destination in mind. All that mattered was that he kept moving forward, kept surviving another day, and got stronger with his powers. So that's exactly what he did. He walked. He trained. He survived.
Days began to pass in a monotonous blur, and the salt plains remained ever flat and desolate, stretching endlessly in every direction like a white ocean frozen in time. His control over his ice powers began to get better and better with each passing day of practice. He was now able to create small amounts of snow that he could melt in his mouth and use to sustain himself in place of water.
He started holding onto the feeling of the cold within him more consciously, really focusing on that sensation that lived in his core. He worked tirelessly on manipulating it and directing it with his will, making his ice constructs sustain themselves better once released from his body. But still, he was having a hard time with more complex creations. Anything beyond basic shapes would quickly fall apart.
After another couple days of endless travel, he found a white bunny, a small creature that stood out against the salt like a spot of life in a dead world. The bunny was clearly rabid, foam gathering at its mouth, and it immediately attempted to attack him with surprising aggression when he got close. Fortunately, it was not a creature of Adam, just a mad animal driven insane by disease or starvation. So he didn't have all that much trouble taking it out with a quick ice spike through its body.
After killing it, he ate the bunny raw, still having considerable trouble choking down such disgusting meals. The taste of warm blood and raw flesh made him gag repeatedly, but nonetheless he did whatever it took to survive. Food was food, and he couldn't afford to be picky in this wasteland.
His burn was pretty much healed now thanks to his cooling powers that he applied to it constantly, soothing the damaged tissue from the inside out. But it had left a scar, a big one at that. He could feel the raised, twisted tissue with his fingers when he touched his face, the texture completely different from his normal skin. His other wounds from the train explosion and the monster fight still hurt when he moved wrong, but they were healing faster than usual thanks to him being an awakened now. That enhanced physiology also seemed to prevent them from becoming infected despite the terrible conditions.
His feet began to feel like they were literally falling apart from the constant walking across the rough salt. Every step sent jolts of pain through his soles. He began to smell… bad. Really bad. Like he was rotting alive from the inside out. The stench was hard to ignore, clinging to his clothes and skin, but he did his best to push it from his mind and keep moving.
His mouth was covered in dried remains of the raw meat he had been eating, crusted around his lips and staining his teeth. He looked and felt like something barely human anymore.
One day, he decided to create as large and flat and clear a piece of ice as he could manage, fashioning it into a makeshift mirror so he could look at his reflection and assess his condition. It took significant concentration and effort, but eventually he succeeded in creating a relatively smooth surface.
But what he saw in that ice mirror made him immediately shatter it on the ground in horror and rage.
His school uniform, once crisp and proper with its black fabric and red highlights was now completely ripped and covered in layers of sweat, snow and dried blood. His mouth was smeared with the remains and blood of the various animals he had been eating, giving him a feral appearance. His white hair, once neat and hanging just above his eyes, was now matted with blood and gore, sticking up at odd, wild angles that made him look deranged.
His eyes seemed hollow and empty. They were the eyes of someone who had seen too much, suffered too much. But worst of all was the burn scar.
The grotesque burn marking covered the entire top left side of his face, including the area around his eye. The skin was twisted and discolored, a permanent reminder of the explosion that had destroyed his life. He was lucky to still be able to see out of that eye at all, the fact that he hadn't lost his vision was a minor miracle.
But he knew right upon seeing that horrific burn marking his face that it would be there for the rest of his life. It would never fade, never heal completely. It would be there constantly, reminding him every single day of what happened on that train, of his complete inability to do anything to save his parents, of his weakness in that crucial moment.
But at the same time, he realized, it would serve as a permanent reminder of what still needed to be done. The revenge yet to be claimed. The debt yet to be paid in blood.
In the future he will look at this scar every time he needed a reminder of why he still walked through this wasteland, why he still drew breath when his parents couldn't. It would remind him of what they took from him, his family, his home, his entire life. And it would remind him of what he would take from them one day in return.
Eve. The High Seraphic Council. The entire corrupt system that had ordered his parents' execution.
Cael stared at his ruined reflection for one more long moment, committing the image to memory, before he deliberately let the ice mirror shatter on the ground into a thousand glittering pieces. The fragments scattered across the white salt like diamonds.
Then he turned away from the broken shards and continued his endless trek through the salt flats, a scarred and broken boy walking alone through a dead world, sustained only by hatred and the promise of vengeance yet to come.