Day Five of being Transmigrated...
"Where am I?"
Edwin woke up on a bedding made of straw and animal furs.
"What is this place? A mountain cave?" He muttered. The rugged stone wall surrounded him; a hanging torch flickered near the entrance.
His hand touched the stone wall. It felt cold.
"Hahaha, I'm still alive!" His laughter echoed through the cave.
"Someone is coming." Footsteps could be heard.
Edwin stood on the bed.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." A rusty voice echoed through the cave as the sound of approaching footsteps deepened.
Deafening pain assaulted the whole of Edwin.
An elderly man with grey hair and a matching beard walked in, carrying a wooden bowl. The man appeared to be in his sixties. Animal furs covered his body.
"Are you with those evil bitches… I mean witches?" Edwin asked. He sat on the bed.
"Oh, you mean 'thank you for saving my sorry life'? If that's what you meant, I'm honored." The old man carried the bowl closer to Edwin's mouth. "You know, I lost two of my aides in exchange for your life."
Edwin sipped the purple liquid.
"Do you have any dying wishes?" The old man asked.
"What?" Edwin spat the liquid on the stone floor. The old man stood up with the bowl in his hands.
"Lad, your parents didn't teach you about respecting the good will of others, did they?"
Edwin's face turned dark.
"I don't have them," he replied.
"Drink." The old man moved the bowl closer, but Edwin knocked it off the old man's hand to the floor. The purple liquid spilled over the stone floor.
"What an ungrateful wretch. I should have given this to my poor Kelo." An injured, huge, fluffy rabbit, feathered ears with brown and grey fur walked in. What surprised Edwin was that it didn't hop; it walked on its two feet.
Based on old Edwin's memories, the current Edwin figured this fluffy rabbit, the size of a fifteen-year-old human, was an aberrant: a mutated wild beast.
"Brat, your parents should have done a better job raising you." The old man stared at Edwin.
"I said I don't have them!" Edwin shouted.
"Oh, I guess I should apologize, but dying people need no apology." The old man chuckled.
"Look, old man, you don't know me and I don't know you. As for saving me, thank you. I have to get back to the village. I don't want my great-grandfather worried." He stepped off the bed.
The old man placed his arm on Edwin's shoulder, stopping him.
"I'm Azazel, by the way. Now you know me." Azazel smiled. "As I asked before, any dying wishes?"
"Edwin. Edwin Mathias. Just kill me already. Since last night, everyone I've met has tried to."
"Brat, I don't know what you're talking about, but thanks to the potion I gave you just now, you have half an hour. The stab on your belly is too deep; you have lost a lot of blood."
"I have to say, I admire you. Someone your age shouldn't have survived the horror you endured. Even a strong man couldn't take that beating and see another day."
Memories flooded Edwin's mind. These memories weren't just about the old Edwin's life in this world; they were also about his sorry life back on Earth. His life on Earth and that of old Edwin had a lot in common.
"Hahaha…" He started laughing. The sound echoed through the mountain cave.
"Back at the village they call me demon… devil child… because my mother died giving birth to me." Tears slipped from his swollen eyes. "To the villagers I'm an outcast, the child of misfortune, the curse-bringer. They despise me. I survived every beating they gave me."
"Comparing me to people who live good lives and still can't take a beating is a disrespect to chaos. They call me the child of chaos. The village believes my existence will bring it to an end."
Azazel watched quietly. "Good. If they call you child of chaos… then who might I be? Chaos itself." He smiled faintly. "How old are you? Your words don't match your age."
Edwin kept ranting. "I hate death. It took everything—my mother, my father, my grandparents. And I'm terrified it will take my great-grandfather too." He punched the stone wall. Blood welled from his knuckles. "I hate the village. I hate the nobles."
"My great-grandfather kept saying everything follows the order of life. Is that order? My parents and grandparents dying so I can live in misery under the villagers' hands?
"I've been stepped on by fate. Is that order too? My great-grandfather rescuing me from the streets… and now this. Is the order of things mocking me? Call it fate, death, misfortune. I hate order the most. I want to triumph over it. Not for anyone else. For myself."
Silence filled the cave.
After a moment, Azazel spoke.
"Lad… do you want to live?"
"What kind of question is that? Of course I do!" Edwin was shaking; he could feel death creeping closer.
"I have an Illuminated-level potion that could patch you up. But awakened potions only work on seekers."
Edwin felt the weight of hopelessness crash down.
"Don't worry," Azazel said. "All you have to do is awaken."
Before Edwin could react, the old man moved with terrifying speed. A flickering flame appeared in his palm, its color shifting wildly. It drilled straight into Edwin's chest.
It didn't burn flesh. It burned the soul.
Edwin screamed. This pain was worse than every beating combined.
"Lad, relax. Feel the flame. Let the burning guide you to your soul."
Edwin knew following the old man's words was his only chance. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and focused on the fire inside him, pushing past the agony.
There—something calm, something inside him but not of his body.
"You're almost there. Don't panic or you'll die."
Edwin felt his soul rejecting the flame.
"Lad, will it in. Feel it and command your soul to stop rejecting. Absorb the cinder."
"I don't know how!"
"Relax. Take a deep breath."
Edwin obeyed. The cinder still burned.
"Treat it like this: your soul is the world, your Inner Lattice is a running stream, and the cinder is a fish you must move into that stream. It's hard. You must will the impossible."
Memories of his childhood trauma back on Earth flashed, followed by old Edwin's memories in this world: the beatings, the curses, the loneliness. But Edwin forced them aside. He willed the cinder downward.
It struck the faint, dormant Inner Lattice—the vertical spiritual spinal cord.
The soul shook. Edwin's entire being screamed in despair. His thoughts vanished. The fury of the burning cinder with drifting colors intensified.
Two vertical circles appeared around the cinder. A celestial diagram filled the space between them. The cinder flickered at the center, absorbing the diagram.
There, at the bottom of Edwin's Inner Lattice, a vertical sigil had formed.
Edwin had assimilated with the cinder.
He had awakened.
His eyes opened. The dark pupils floating at the center of his eyes seemed to keep changing color, yet when you looked again they remained as dark as a moonless night.
Edwin the dark eyed boy with dark hair closed his eyes again. The currents of the newborn seeker drifted through the ice-cold air, taking the story back four days ago.