It hurts.
My lungs—they feel like they're burning.
Khone, dazed, couldn't help but dwell on the agony consuming him. Yet, strangely, there was also a sense of distance, a faint dissonance in his mind—as if the pain did not truly belong to him, as though it was being inflicted on someone else and he was merely a witness to it.
Likely shock. His mind had dissociated from the sheer suddenness of it all.
He lay limply in a rocky field of jagged stone stalagmites. His body slowly slid down the rough granite surface of one of them, the spike driven through his stomach. With every inch his body slipped, the wound widened further.
What had begun as a small puncture had long since become a fist-sized hole torn through his abdomen.
He couldn't pull himself off.
His spine had snapped.
Khone tried to will his arms to move, to drag himself free. He didn't know if he could survive wounds like this—but he had always recovered strangely fast before. Faster than he ever should have.
Still, his arms refused to respond.
His entire body felt numb, yet unbearably hot, as if every inch of his flesh had been stabbed with smoldering needles.
Hurts hurts hurts hurts hurts.
His bloodshot eyes forced themselves to stay open, as though even a single blink might cause them to close forever. The expression frozen on his face was almost peaceful—like someone quietly accepting their final moments.
His thoughts twisted in pain. His mind slowly began to lose coherence.
He felt like he was dying.
The heat in his body, though smoldering, felt deathly cold.
Then—
Before his dimming eyes, a faint flash rippled through the air. From his body, a multitude of roots began to grow—ethereal and illusory, as though formed from the air itself, barely visible.
The flesh around his stomach squirmed violently.
Yet it could not repair itself.
In fact, the massive stalagmite only widened the wound further as his body continued sliding downward.
Inch by inch, his guts spilled out—a bloody heap of viscera trailing along the granite spike.
Luckily for Khone, the stalagmite had pierced the left side of his lower abdomen. After an unimaginably long stretch of time—time that seemed to drag on for eternity—the jagged stone tore through most of his left side.
At last, the rest of his body slipped free.
He fell to the ground, a large section of his flesh missing.
"Fuck—fuck, I am so fucked… it hurts… it's so hot… where am I? That bird… it dropped me…"
Khone's flesh, muscles, and spilled viscera slowly began to heal, knitting themselves together as if growing anew.
But he still couldn't move.
His spine had yet to regenerate.
Half-mindedly, he turned his gaze outward, observing his surroundings.
It was a forest of stone spires—countless rocky pillars jutting up toward the sky like a field of spears.
Using the little strength left in his body, Khone began to crawl forward a single thought running through his mind .
"fuck that bird!"