Cursed with immortality, Mars goes on a journey with his lifelong more-than-friends partner Astral, a painfully average future-seeing mage, to find the root of magic, in an effort to ease the side effects of Astral's visions - and to finish their th...
ओह! यह छवि हमारे सामग्री दिशानिर्देशों का पालन नहीं करती है। प्रकाशन जारी रखने के लिए, कृपया इसे हटा दें या कोई भिन्न छवि अपलोड करें।
When I died the first time, I saw nothing. But it wasn't nothing, it was just white. Everything was white. I was a part of that white. I felt nothing and I felt light at the same time. I had examined this white so many times. Tried to figure out what it meant. I hadn't gotten any closer. No religion had any answers for me. Neither did science. For all I knew, it was what happened to everyone when they died. They'd be in this white place, and they'd feel nothing but also feel light.
I hated the sensation. It was as if I was trying to stay grounded but also tried to take off. As if I tried to move on, but my body was keeping me in place. As if I didn't know whether to go or stay. But I always stayed. It was part of my curse. I couldn't leave. I could get to this place and then I could return to the realm of the living.
I hated dying. When I came to, my body hurt. I'd be sick for days after. Exhausted. My body needed to heal, and my heart needed to slam itself alive again. My body was also so cold. Apparently, it took enough time for the warmth to leave my body before I actually came alive again.
I had died three times already. Once when my family died with me. Once when I accidentally ate some poisoned berries in the college garden when I was four years old. And once when Astral and I had gone skating on the lake and I had fallen through the ice. Astral had managed to haul me back to land with his magic. We were twelve or thirteen. I couldn't remember now. But seeing him sit by my bed when I awoke had been the best thing in the world.
Now when I awoke, it wasn't in the safe confinements of our bedroom at the college. The nurse wasn't there to tell me I had had an accident and died again.
There was pain. So much of it. It felt like I had swallowed sand and I knew what it meant. They had cut my throat. My head was throbbing as well, so they must've hit me too. Someone had worked very hard to kill me.
I let out a hoarse sob. I couldn't move my hands. I felt cool metal around my wrists. I was chained to a wall. There weren't actual chains, just a long metal bar above my head, bolted to the wall. And attached to that bar were a pair of cuffs.
My shirt had been cut open and there was blood on my chest. I felt violated. I felt exposed. I didn't ever walk around without a shirt on because of the discolourations all over my body. I didn't like showing that. I was also skinny. I didn't like showing my body because it didn't reflect who I was. I wasn't just this. I didn't feel like it was an accurate representation of who I was.
Until now, the only people who had seen my body before was the nurse at the college, the arch mage who had taken care of me, and Astral. Three people had seen me and now I was on display. I almost cared more about that than I did about the pain. Pain I was used to. I was always in pain. I was never exposed.
"Help," I croaked.
No one came to help me. I wasn't sure if there had been someone if they would've even heard me. I couldn't do much more than whisper. I knew my throat was still healing.
