Chapter 09 (part 1/2) - Empty Husk

  For the first time since arriving in this new world, Vincent was able to dream. A normal dream, confined to the limits of his mind. He wasn’t dragged by any current, nor did he feel he was losing anything. And although he didn’t know if he would ever recover the memories he had lost, a spark of hope filled his heart when he saw, even for an instant, the faces of his parents and family again.

  It seemed that some memories still lingered in his unconscious, fragments of his soul the void had not managed to devour… or perhaps part of that lost soul had returned, recognizing that, like a hermit crab, it could settle once more in a body that finally felt like its own.

  The storm had passed. His body, once fragile and unstable, had finally calmed. He had survived… but with serenity came desolation. Accepting that this was his world weighed on him like lead. He felt like a castaway after a storm, stranded on an unknown shore. Drowning was no longer the threat… the real danger was the island itself, silent and strange. He didn’t know if he would ever return.

  When he finally opened his eyes, it was already daytime. The sun poured through the window, lighting up Lily’s red hair as she slept beside him, exhausted after keeping vigil the entire night.

  “Lily? What happened?”

  Vincent asked softly, trying to wake her, squeezing her hand carefully.

  “Hmm?”

  Lily woke with her eyes crusted over and her hair a complete mess, with a deep crease from the bedsheets across her cheek. She wiped the drool at the corner of her mouth before reacting.

  “Vin!”

  “Shhh!”

  The nurse hushed her immediately, glaring.

  “Vin…”

  Lily repeated in an emotional whisper, leaning closer with a smile she couldn’t hold back.

  “Vin… you’re alive…”

  Apparently, he was. His body felt much lighter. And not in the metaphorical sense of having left some memories behind, but physically. The constant pressure that had been crushing him since he arrived, which he had attributed to the weakness of the body he now inhabited, was gone.

  The tower’s spiritual energy, dense as ocean water, had been crushing him from every angle like a diver sunk too deep. But now, with his own flow restored, that pressure no longer overwhelmed him; it moved through him, integrated with him. The lethargy was gone.

  “Thank you…”

  It was all he could say. His voice was hoarse from screaming, his body still aching, every breath was painful, but he had to thank her.

  “Thank you for saving me…”

  “No…”

  She shook her head.

  “It was my fault, I should have been with you… if I hadn’t shown you those books maybe…”

  “I would have done it anyway… you don’t know this version of me very well, but I’m a bit stubborn.”

  “Yes, I see that, haha. What matters is that you’re alright, nothing else.”

  Lily smiled, genuinely relieved, but Vincent knew his survival had not come without cost.

  “During the process I couldn’t think, I couldn’t speak, but I did hear. I don’t know exactly how things work in this world, but I understand you took on debt because of me.”

  Still holding hands, Vincent reached toward her and gently pulled up her sleeve. On her wrist were two golden bracelets, pulsing and vascular, almost alive.

  “You had to request a second one because of me, didn’t you? Weren’t they originally for our resurrection?”

  “They’re servitude bracelets… they can be used for any type of debt. Honestly, I’m glad they gave me a second one. It would be hard to account for two very different kinds of work with only one. It would keep it constantly vascular.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “But they’re alive now, they’re moving.”

  “That’s only because I’ve been with you this whole time… don’t worry, it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Lily reassured him as she hid the bracelets under her sleeve again.

  “They’re paying for me too, right? That’s why you haven’t been able to pay your own debt.”

  “No… that’s not it.”

  Lily answered in a way that was anything but convincing.

  I feel like a parasite… I can’t let this girl support me. I need to work.

  Vincent tried to rise, but Lily stopped him, reminding him that he needed rest.

  “Lily, I need to do something, anything. I can’t stay still, look.”

  He showed her his bracelet. Even without seeing it, he knew it was swollen, throbbing and reddish, tight enough to cut off circulation.

  “What happens if it doesn’t calm down?”

  At first Lily hesitated to answer, but Vincent’s intense stare forced her hand. It was a look far more mature than she was used to receiving. For an instant she realized her Vin was no child she had to protect… he was a man. Probably even older than her.

  “If the required retribution isn’t met, they can force the debtor to perform a servile act against their will… there are laws that protect resurrected to some extent, but the servitude contract isn’t covered by any of them, since if you haven’t served, the tower considers you deserving of whatever they demand from you.”

  “So they could force me to submit to the mind devourer…”

  “Exactly. And now that it’s obvious you’ve awakened, they’ll want you to work even more. Since you’re an illiterate husk who can’t use magic, there isn’t much you can offer… they’ll probably overload you with impossible tasks so you can’t fulfill them, and push you toward the devourer.”

  Seeing Vincent’s expression, Lily cut herself off. She had said too much and didn’t want to frighten him.

  “B-but don’t worry, I’m here, right? I’m a very capable magister and I can share your burden.”

  “But I don’t want that. I want to stand on my own. I don’t want you to end up facing the devourer because of me.”

  “And you will, in time, but right now you need to recover. Don’t worry about me, they wouldn’t dare harm my mind. My gift is unique, and they still haven’t figured out how it works. They wouldn’t risk losing it.”

  “Even so… I don’t like being in your debt. You’ve done so much for me, you saved me without even knowing who I am…”

  “I already told you, I’m the one who owes you far more… you saved me before, even if you don’t remember it.”

  Lily leaned closer and placed her hands on Vincent’s face. The gesture stunned him; for a moment he thought she was about to kiss him, but the warmth of energy flowing from her fingertips told him what she was really doing.

  “Lily, what are you doing? You don’t need to impart more knowledge, I can learn on my own.”

  “That’s not it. I want to show you something… don’t worry, these memories are rooted in my soul, I won’t lose them.”

  Vincent’s vision turned dark. Lily was taking control of his eyes, and a faint image began to form across his retina.

  “You see, Vin… beyond the knowledge we bring, the tower tries to force a kind of evolution. They believe that by flooding fetuses with enormous amounts of energy, new horizons will open. They want to create new gifts, innate magic… true magical beings, not just scholars.”

  The image sharpened gradually. It wasn’t just a projection: it was a point of view, a lived memory.

  “My gift isn’t that impressive. I wasn’t born with it, but without it I would be dead. You and I aren’t so different, you know? We both had delayed settlements; our souls arrived late, so to speak. Yours got stuck and never allowed a mature consciousness to form in your body, but in my case the opposite happened.”

  “What are you showing me, Lily? Is this you?”

  In his eyes, a scene played out from the perspective of a small girl. The adults surrounding her smiled at her with affection. It was obvious they adored her.

  “Not exactly… you see, the girl who lived in my body was completely capable and aware. Charming, diligent… and even though she was a husk, she had earned the admiration of her teachers. She showed so much potential… but everything changed when my soul settled.”

  The scene warped and shifted. The girl now lay in a crude bed, propped against a stone wall. At the edges of her vision he could see her arms and legs: frail, thin as glass, so delicate they looked like they might shatter under a single hand.

  “It was sudden… I didn’t know what to do. My body already had a formed flow… there was already an established soul. We fought for control, and I won. There wasn’t room for both of us, nor for our memories. I tried to hold on to as much of myself as I could, but in the process I lost my sense of the body… I was so focused on saving my mind that I forgot how to inhabit the flesh.”

  Soon after, a young boy appeared. He approached awkwardly, holding a piece of bread. He broke it carefully and tried to feed the girl. The face… it was his. Vincent saw himself, younger, clumsy, but determined.

  “How could I remember how to control a body here, if I barely managed to control it in my previous life?”

  The image shifted again, though the framing remained similar. The ruined room had become a modern hospital ward; the girl was now connected to tubes and machines that breathed for her, fed her, and monitored every fragile sign of life.

  “I didn’t just lose most of my memories when I woke up. I also lost my ability to move… even before I died in my old world, I had already lost control of my body. So when I arrived here, I couldn’t control it either. The new me was left catatonic, dead inside, unable to feed myself or… even clean myself.”

  “In cases this extreme, resurrected failures are extracted and then discarded, but because the old me had been so beloved, they chose not to experiment on my body. They simply let me wither. They cared for me for a while, but when I showed no improvement, they abandoned me in the morgue while I was still breathing… I couldn’t scream or ask for help. I was locked inside my own mind.”

  Lily’s voice cracked as she relived her past, and the sorrow bled into the vision as if the memories themselves were crying. Vincent felt the pain as if it were happening to him.

  “I still remember the day you found me… I don’t know how you did it. Did you hear the screams of my soul?”

  Lily smiled softly…