Chapter 226: What It Cost

On the fourth day after he woke, the Divine Sage allowed Encrid to sit up.

It took two people to do it.

The Reaper carefully lifted him by the back while the Sage arranged cushions behind him. Once Encrid was sitting, the old man stepped away and studied him with his arms folded.

"Good," the Sage said. "You didn’t faint."

"Was I going to?"

"Most people would."

The old man pulled a chair closer and sat down.

"Now, I think it’s time I told you what you did to yourself. I’d like you to listen to everything before you say anything clever."

Encrid nodded.

The Sage raised one hand and spread his fingers.

"A body has channels. Forty to sixty for every Star. You know that much, or you wouldn’t have advanced through cultivation."

"Yes."

"When a cultivator advances a Realm, those channels widen. They do it slowly, over months or years, because they need time to adjust to the increased flow of Star Energy."

He lowered one finger.

"Initiate."

Then another.

"Ascendant."

He continued until his hand was closed.

"Each advancement puts more pressure on the channels. They stretch, recover, and grow stronger before they are asked to handle more energy."

The Sage looked directly at Encrid.

"You didn’t do that. You tore every channel open as wide as it could possibly go, all at once, and then you held them that way."

Encrid remained silent.

"I don’t know how you managed it," the Sage continued. "And I’m not going to ask. People who do impossible things rarely want to explain how they did them."

"Thank you."

"I haven’t finished."

The Sage leaned forward.

"When whatever you did came to an end, your channels tried to return to their original state. Some contracted too quickly and tore. Others didn’t close properly and remained wider than they should have been. Your body has been bleeding internally for two weeks. The only reason it has stopped is that I’ve spent every night repairing the damage, one channel at a time."

Encrid looked down at his bandaged hands.

He had not thought about this at the bridge. He had only thought about the sixty seconds he had been given and what he needed to accomplish before they ran out.

He had not considered what would happen when the sixty-first second arrived.

"How long would it take?" he asked.

"Before you can walk? A week or two. Before you can lift a sword? Three weeks, perhaps. Before you can use your Star without tearing apart everything I’ve repaired?"

The Sage shrugged.

"Six weeks. Maybe longer. If you try before then, I’ll know, and I’ll be very angry with you."

Six weeks without using his Star.

Encrid took a slow breath.

It was not what he wanted to hear, but it could have been worse. He was alive, and the Sage seemed confident that he would recover.

There was something else, however.

The old man studied him for a moment before speaking again.

"When your channels opened, they didn’t all return to their original size. Some of them closed a little wider than before."

He tapped his throat with one stained finger.

"Your Star is deeper now. You can check it once you recover."

Encrid did not need to check.

He had already seen the change in his status window on the first night. At the time, he had assumed it was an error or a leftover effect from the token.

Now he understood that it was real. ℴℴ𝗺

Apex.

Gus had reached that Realm in the middle of a battle at seventeen. Rael had stood there two years earlier. Encrid himself had spent fourteen months struggling to open the channels before finally reaching Ascendant.

And now he was Apex, sitting in a bed and unable to touch his Star.

He could still feel it faintly, deep in the hollow of his throat. It seemed larger than before, like a lake where there had once been a pond.

But whenever he tried to draw even a little energy from it, pain spread through his damaged channels.

"So?" the Sage asked.

"It’s deeper," Encrid admitted.

"I told you." The Sage looked pleased with himself. "Now don’t touch it."

Encrid had no intention of arguing.

Not when the man speaking had spent two weeks keeping him alive.

? ? ?

Sera brought him a mirror the next morning.

He had asked the Reaper for one, and the Reaper had passed the request to his daughter. She entered the room carrying a hand mirror with both hands, placed it beside him, and gave him a shy smile before leaving.

Encrid picked it up.

The face looking back at him was thinner than he remembered. His cheekbones were sharper, and dark shadows sat beneath his eyes.

There was also a streak of grey hair at his left temple.

It was not white or silver. It was simply grey, like ash left in a cold hearth. The streak began near his forehead and ran back several fingers’ width.

He touched it.

The hair felt the same as the rest. Only the color had changed.

He lowered the mirror and examined his right hand.

The bandages had been removed that morning. Fine white lines ran across the back of his hand, stretching from his knuckles to his wrist. They branched out in different directions, resembling frost spreading across a window during winter.

He had held the sword with this hand.

The Absolute frost had passed through it.

He turned his hand over and examined it from both sides. The lines did not hurt, and they did not seem to affect his movement. They were simply there.

He had no reason to believe they would ever disappear.

Encrid set the mirror down.

He had saved the bridge, but he had not escaped without a price.

He had only been too busy surviving to notice it.

? ? ?

Ten days after waking, Encrid walked into the garden for the first time.

It was early morning. The sky was pale, and dew covered the grass. The garden was surrounded by high stone walls, and an old plum tree stood beside a stone bench.

He walked slowly, following the path until he reached the tree. Even that short distance left him tired.

Near the bench, he found a fallen branch about the length of a sword. It was almost straight, with only a few small twigs sticking out from its sides.

He picked it up.

His arms shook under its weight.

It was ridiculous. It was only a branch, but his body had grown so weak that even holding it properly was difficult.

Still, he stood with his feet apart, bent his knees, and lowered his weight.

He had stood this way twenty thousand times in the darkness behind the granary.

Falling Talon.

He did not draw on his Star. He knew better than to risk that. Instead, he raised the branch over his head and brought it down in a slow, clumsy swing.

The movement was weak, but something changed as he reached the end of it.

His hips turned.

It was a small movement, almost impossible to notice from the outside, but Encrid felt it clearly. His body had shifted its weight into the swing instead of relying on the strength of his arms alone.

He had been trying to learn that movement for a year and a half.

He had finally done it.

For a moment, he stood still, holding the branch and thinking about the bridge. He remembered the borrowed memories of nine generations, the perfect movements he had briefly understood, and the way the seventh form had come to him when he needed it most.

The system had already recorded his improvement.

Now his body was beginning to catch up.

[ Gannon Family Swordsmanship: D (0%) → D (4%) ]

Encrid stared at the window.

Then his legs gave way, and he sat down hard on the stone bench.

He had managed a single swing. His arms were shaking, and his breathing had grown uneven, but the system had still recorded the progress.

Four percent.

It was not much, but it was his.

He looked down at the branch in his hand.

The power he had borrowed on the bridge was gone. The knowledge he had gained from it was still incomplete, and his body would need time to recover.

But he could learn.

He had learned before, with nothing but practice and stubbornness. He could do it again.

That night, Encrid dreamed of a mountainside.

A man stood at the edge of it, with nothing below him and only the sky above. He was far away, his figure faint and blurred, as though Encrid were looking at him through deep water.

The man raised his sword.

Then he cut something that was not there.

Encrid woke with his heart pounding.

The room was dark, and the lamp had gone out. Beyond the window, the garden was silent.

He lay still for a moment, listening.

Then he felt it.

Somewhere outside, beyond the window, something was watching him.

? ? ?