I was close to a breakthrough, I could feel it in my bones, could feel it call through my soul.

  I’d been pushing for so long now, and I almost pushed past some kind of arbitrary threshold. The fact that a rat had been watching me the past few days was enough to convince me that it was more than just delusion. Alvir wouldn’t waste his time with invading my privacy…I didn’t think, and it was only around in my room. Didn’t follow me around the city.

  I still killed the first one, and the second. I gave up after the third and accepted it for what it was. I didn’t like being watched, but what could I do if the bastard had an endless supply of the things? Besides, there was a point where I might've offended the witch, and that was very much a bad idea. So I just focuses on pushing.

  More and more and more.

  Pain was just a thing to be experienced at that point, the cracks in my pathway growing large enough to where mana seeped out into my body proper. Luckily it still needed my will to infuse anything so my tolerance wasn’t being strained. But fuck. It hurt so bad.

  I’d never faced suffering to that extent, and it was all the harder considering I could just let go. But…I found motivation recently in the form of memories.

  I dug through so many bodies searching for my parents, and eventually I did. A headless father and a mother whose face was set in a rictus of pain. The people I’d known the best since reincarnating to this world, they served as an anchor for my sanity for so long.

  Now they were the image I forced myself to see whenever I wanted to let go.

  It was surprisingly effective, the memory of their bodies alongside so many others being ample reason to push past my suffering in the pursuit of strength. There were bodies I didn’t find, but I didn’t search everywhere.

  I didn’t confront the good memories though, and that was a bit ironic, wasn’t it?

  I condensed my mana in a singular point, using almost a fifth of my reserves in this one pathway, and it looked to be on the verge of breaking. If I didn’t know any better I might’ve considered stopping there, but any damage had healed in an instant once I let the weakness overwhelm me. So I didn’t, because I was so close to something. Something that I knew would only help me. Something that I needed.

  If the price was suffering…then I’d pay it, because I had been so stagnant since coming to Anik. Not really but…progress wasn’t fast enough. Not nearly.

  So my spirit suffered, and I was the perpetrator of its sorrows.

  Stretching and cutting and burning and stabbing and crushing and tearing and—

  It hurt so much.

  So much that it was hard to think, let alone move.

  So much that my whole world became a holistic expression of pain.

  So much that I couldn’t even muster the strength to scream.

  Like divine punishment, transcendent in its delivery, except entirely caused by me. A punishment for my foolish pursuit for power.

  But it did lead to power. I was certain of it.

  So certain that it bordered on the supernatural, like a rival for my elven senses. It whispered of revelation so profound that I couldn’t even begin to understand. It screamed of absolution so thorough that any weakness would be scorched clean. It—

  It was here, it just needed one more step.

  I took the quarter of the mana that I’d gathered, pushing it together harder and harder until—

  It condensed, becoming something like a raindrop, no larger than a single mote of mana, but so intense in its pressure.

  I lost control, and it didn’t unravel. Instead it traveled down the pathway of my spirit, integrating with the river and joining my circulation.

  It traveled to new pathways, ones I hadn’t trained, and the pain was so intense that the only thought I could manage was a prayer for it to end.

  Three days.

  That was how long it took for someone to finally check on me. Three days of constant pain transforming me into something that could only recognize the touch of suffering. Quite literally, when Aira picked me up off the ground I didn’t have the sense in my delirious state to understand what was going on. Just the ever-present, all encompassing bombardment.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I didn’t feel it when I was rushed to Healer Ken in a flurry, and I didn’t recognize the liquids forced into my body through some sort of spell. Apparently nutrients were different, needing something more complex, whatever that meant.

  I spent two more days in that state before I was capable enough to recognize words.

  “She hasn’t contracted anything, by all respects her body is perfectly healthy,” a voice I thought was Healer Ken said.

  “Then what the fuck!” Aira yelled, and I felt bad for the healer. There was a lot of anger radiating off of her, so much that I could hear the whispers despite all the pain. “If she’s not contracted a disease or something then how do you explain this?”

  “I…can’t.” Ken sighed. “It has to be something magical but…learning a Word doesn’t do this to a mage.”

  A word? He said that with an odd reverence.

  “Fuck. FUCK. I shouldn’t have let the idiot experiment on her own. I should’ve had her sent to the universities to train properly, damned be her desires,” Aira cursed.

  “We still don’t know the cause…it could be external,” Ken said, which blanketed the room in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time.

  I begged the World to keep them talking, it wasn’t much of a distraction but it was something.

  “Are you saying a mage did this?” Aira said. “Or gods forbid…a witch?”

  I couldn’t see them but I imagined Ken gave her a somber nod considering the string of curses that followed.

  The conversation was a bit inane at that point considering they were just speculating. Alvir got mentioned and for some reason I actually paniced a bit. Why? What did it matter to me if he got outed as a witch? It didn’t really but…he could tell them what I was.

  An odd part of me sincerely doubted he’d do that.

  Better to shelve that for later, once I wasn’t experiencing the equivalent of a full body suffering spree. I could feel the droplet of power coursing through my pathways though, and the pain had gotten to a point where I could think! So, I started thinking about how to end this ride.

  I tried to grab the droplet with my will and—

  Failed, the thing slipped from my grasp so completely as though I held no authority over it at all. The rest of my mana wasn’t any harder to control despite the pain, just not how the ethereal muscle worked. But I needed to get rid of the droplet, it was simply too much.

  I could drain all my mana, black out and suffer through mana sickness but surely that would get rid of the droplet, surely it would give me reprieve.

  Or…I could ride the wave, the pain was getting lesser, and that wasn't just because of my increased tolerance after so much constant suffering. My pathways were getting stronger, healing and reinforcing themselves each time the droplet passed.

  I put all my mana into my spell.

  “I should turn you into the empire,” the healer finally sighed, breaking me from my revery. “I don’t know what you’ve done. But you’ve fucked with something you shouldn’t have”

  He waited for me to reply but I gave nothing.

  He sighed again. “Can you at least tell me who put you on this path if you won’t say what it is.”

  “It was something I thought of myself,” I said, though the man clearly didn’t believe me.

  “There is a price to learning magic, a steep price. Like a cliff with such a long drop. You’ve fucked around and found out much earlier than you should, the fact you’ve even awakened to mana at your age at all is astounding. Better to send you to the universities where you can learn and serve the imperial majesty. Or the stake.

  “You know I went through…something similar, when I was twenty three? I had preparation, mitigating factors, and an understanding of what I was getting into. It was still hell. I don’t know what you’ve done but it shoots past my experience into a realm of its own.

  So why are you smiling?”

  I blinked at him, had I been smiling? I had, that was probably a bit creepy? Certainly wasn’t doing me any favours at the moment. Maybe I’d gone insane? Crazy little Yir, lost her mind in the pursuit of power. How sad. My parents would roll in their graves. Shame that, it took a while to bury the two. I’d hate to disturb them, that just seemed rude.

  It took me a while to notice that in the time I’d been thinking nonsense, the healer had been waiting for my response. “I’m stronger now,” I said honestly, and with more mania than I cared to admit.

  “Is that really it?” he said.

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand, I’ve been training for months and now I’m stronger. Everything has been so incremental, so slow, and now I’ve done something to make real progress.”

  “And could have lost your life in the process,” Ken said.

  “So?” I laughed hysterically. “I didn’t in the end, and now I’m so much closer to survival!”

  I broke into a fit, real mirth infecting my being as the healer’s gaze pinned me to the chair I sat on. Happiness was so infectious once it invaded the system! Who was I to block its advance, after such a victory? Now I just needed to condition my pathways to handle the pressure and I’d be golden.

  “Survive what?” he asked.

  Hmmm...fuck it.

  I leaned forward, my smile still wide on my face, and whispered ever so softly. “I don’t know when, but the empire will declare war on the kingdom of Yesnia, and that will mark the beginning of the End. Only a year following the beginning of war, the Gods will walk among us, bringing their hordes and domains down onto our feet, and we will either die or become supplicants.

  Or.

  We fight, we survive. Until their window to affect the world has passed, until we are left with a broken land to rebuild. Something new, something that will last.”

  “You’re crazy,” Healer Ken said after a long beat of silence.

  I spread my arms to my sides and smiled wider. “Perhaps.”

  Then, nothing.

  Healer Ken stared at me with a blank expression, the kind that hid thoughts like a dagger in the dark.

  “Alright,” the healer said. “Alright.”