The days passed like broken glass—shimmering with pain, sharp with silence.
Eudora didn't tell anyone about the way his arm had healed.
He didn't have to.
Whispers started the next day. Someone had seen the blood. Someone had seen it vanish. Someone claimed they'd seen flesh knit back together like melted wax.
But the Bound Path Guild didn't believe in rumors.
They believed in scars.
So Eudora kept training.
His strikes were slow. His steps were uneven. He didn't improve like the others—no sudden strength, no burst of speed. But he didn't break either.
That was what people noticed.
He never broke.
---
"Again."
Steel clashed in the training pit.
Eudora stumbled under a strike from Marx, sweat soaking his shirt. The training blade cracked against his ribs. He grunted but didn't fall.
Marx frowned. "You're not blocking right."
"I know."
"You're not dodging, either."
"I know."
Marx lowered his weapon. "You're letting yourself get hit."
Eudora said nothing.
Because it was true.
Letting the pain in... helped. Not because it made him stronger. But because the healing responded to it. Every injury, every bruise, every fracture—it came back slower. But it came back better. Denser. Thicker. Tougher.
As if his body learned.
Like some forgotten instinct buried deep in the marrow.
---
That Night
Eudora lay awake on his cot, staring at the ceiling above the bunk.
Marx had fallen asleep already.
The moonlight slanted across Eudora's hands. He turned them over, palms up. The skin had once been blistered and raw. Now it looked untouched. Not flawless—just… changed.
The more he healed, the more alien his own body felt.
He pressed a blade against his forearm and drew a shallow line.
Pain flared.
He watched, heart steady, as the wound slowly closed.
Not fast. Not magical.
But certain.
Like gravity.
It terrified him.
Because it wasn't a blessing.
It was a response.
His body didn't want to live—it refused to die.
---
A Warning
The next morning, during breakfast, a senior guildmember—an old, pale-eyed woman missing half her teeth—slid beside him in the mess hall.
"You heal quick," she muttered.
Eudora kept eating.
"Don't look so proud. Seen it before. Young ones like you thinking they're chosen. But that kind of healing? It's not a gift."
She leaned closer, breath like rot.
"It's a warning."
Eudora stared at her. "Why?"
"Because the world doesn't give anything for free, boy. If you're healing like that, something else is bleeding in your place."
She stood and limped away.
Eudora sat in silence.
And for the first time since he regressed...
He wondered if the monster he was becoming wasn't something inside him—
—but something trying to get out.