I shouldn’t be alive. It’s not possible.
An explosion. An impossibly bright light like a thousand suns that pours through the cracks in the stone wall beside him as if it was made of paper. A roar like a thousand dragons feels almost too quiet at first before swelling rapidly to a deafening howl. A heat like a thousand furnaces sears his face, his hands, as if he’d put his whole body inside the oven alongside the bread and opened the flue vents wide. Through the pain he sees the steeple of the cathedral, rising proudly above the rooftops of Vigil like the Inheritor’s sword itself. Through the pain he watches the spire break off, watches it fall, watches it land in the street, watches it crush a cart piled high with onions and potatoes to be sold at the market. Through the pain he watches as Saarah and Mikel turn back towards the bakery, watches as their clothes dissolve, watches as their flesh dissolves, watches as the love of his life and the light of his life are vaporized by a wall of brilliant fire. Through the pain he watches as the wall of his shop starts to sway, starts to rock, starts to fall towards him. Through the pain he watches as stones blot out the sight of the burning sky.
I shouldn’t be alive. It’s not fair.
It’s a miracle he survived, they tell him. It must have been the rocks and the earthen walls of his cellar that protected him from the worst of the blast, they say. He’s lucky to be here with a broken leg and the buttons of his apron seared into his chest. But they don’t seem to hear the whispers. They don’t flinch at the shadows, the shades that cling to the outlines on the scorched walls. They don’t listen to his pleas to go back, to look for Saarah and Mikel, to let him go back and find them. They don’t let him get up off the stretcher, push him back down when he tries, pull the strips of burnt kitchen towels and tattered shirts tighter around his limbs. They don’t listen as he begs, cries, screams, rages at them. They don’t look at him as his eyes turn bone-white and the shadows darken the air around him.
They don’t look up from where they lie on the ground as he hobbles away, ghosts trailing behind him like smoke from a smoldering candlestick.
I shouldn’t be alive. It’s not right.
Somehow he made it out of the ruins of the once-proud city. He didn’t keep track of how many days he stayed, scrabbling helplessly at broken buildings and weeping in empty streets. Nor did he keep track of how many undead creatures he choked with his bare hands, decapitated with a length of broken metal, bludgeoned with pieces of wood and rocks and rubble and brilliant white flames that ran up his burned arms as if to catch the tears running down his face. But eventually the tears ended. Eventually the sun rose again. Eventually he followed the Path River out of the Gravelands and into Caliphas. But he would never be the same - even after a priest of Pharasma set his leg, even after his skin sloughed off and regrew. He would never open that pastry shop he had dreamed about with Saarah. He would never get to watch Mikel grow into a fine man with his mother’s hands and his father’s heart. He would never settle in one place for more than a few months before things got too comfortable, too familiar, too safe. He didn’t need such things, didn’t want such things, didn’t deserve such things and feelings.
Instead he threw himself time and time and time again into danger. Take me, there’s no loss if I don’t come back. Let me go alone, you’re too young to be throwing your life away like that. And yet somehow he survived every time. Sometimes he learned new tricks, new skills. Sometimes he saw the ghosts of Vigil through his tears, striking down his foes. Sometimes they spoke to him, whispered to him. That was how he had learned of Galt, of the Grey Gardeners, and of their final blades. That was why he had accepted what was most certainly a suicide mission.
I shouldn’t be alive.
