“He’s not dying?”
It isn’t the first time he’s heard that.
He knows it won’t be the last.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
No, the pain blooms and blossoms with each passing spell, each little bit of void-touched fire frustratingly curling and twisting its way inside and out. His clothes are tattered and scorched, but his body lays unbroken.
There are bruises. There are bumps. There is the feeling of a battering ram bashing him over and over.
Then there is the lightning. It courses through his limbs and lifts the body, making its way into the eye, irises shifting up and down. Up and down. Up and down.
The world is full of rhythms, and it’s just about finding the right one for you.
In this moment, his body attunes itself to the lightning. It’ll ride, ride, ride it all the way-
“He’s not dying?”
Not the first time. Not the last time.
The void-touched lightning was a mistake.
But what would they know? How would they know?
He’s the man lifted by levin, who lives in a painful purple, who has collapsed mountains and cracked the earth down to its foundation, for he-
“He’s not dying?”
No.
He isn’t.
But they are.
They just don’t know it yet.
