Luthra woke up to pain grinding through his arms, his chest, his soul. He sat up and looked at his right arm, where a black serpent coiled from wrist to shoulder. It wasn’t ink but part of his skin now, feeling both cold and alive under his fingers. The forest floor was a ruin around him, Shrieker bodies torn apart with a brutality that made his stomach turn. He remembered everything - the rage, the laughter, the absolute power coursing through him, and the terrifying joy he’d felt while using it. ’I lost control. Completely.’ Rebecca was huddled at the base of a tree fifty feet away, curled into a tight ball with her arms wrapped around her head. She was trembling like a leaf in a storm. He pushed himself to his feet, his broken arms protesting with fresh agony. He took one careful step toward her. She flinched hard, scrambling backward on all fours until her back hit another tree. She wouldn’t look at him, just stared at the ground while her small body shook uncontrollably. "It’s me." His voice came out softer than he intended. He stopped moving, looking from his hands to her trembling form. He’d done this. He’d broken a kid that was looking up to him, and this failure was worse than being disowned, worse than anything his family had done. ’What do I do now? I can’t just walk over there. She thinks I’m a monster.’ He sat down a few feet from her, moving carefully to keep his broken arms still. ’What am I supposed to say here? Sorry I went nuts and beat you up? God, that sounds pathetic.’ She didn’t answer, but her shaking eased up. She was listening. "That wasn’t me. I mean, it was my body, but..." He stopped, started again. "There’s this thing inside me. This power, it’s not good. It’s angry all the time, and when I tried to use just a little bit to fight those monsters, it took over completely." He touched the black serpent tattoo with the fingers that still worked. "This is what’s left of it now. I locked it up. But yeah, it was still my body that hurt you. My hands. So I’m sorry. I’m really sorry." She sat picking at the dirt with her fingers, making small patterns while the silence stretched between them. Her face stayed turned away, but the trembling had mostly stopped. "I hurt you too." Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "When I first got my magic. I broke your wrist." "That was different. You couldn’t control it." "You couldn’t either." He looked down at the black serpent coiled around his arm. The tattoo seemed to shift when he wasn’t watching it directly, like something sleeping that might wake up. "Yeah, but I chose to use that power. I knew it was dangerous." She finally looked at him. Her left cheek was swollen where he’d hit her, dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Seeing it made his stomach twist. "Does it hurt?" She pointed at the tattoo. "Yeah. But not as much as knowing I did that to you." She nodded slowly and pushed herself up from the ground, moving carefully like her ribs ached. "We should probably get out of here. The dead bird things are starting to smell really bad." He blinked at her casual tone. "That’s it? You’re not going to run away screaming?" "Where would I go? Besides, my dad was worse. And you stopped yourself. He never did." The matter-of-fact way she said it hit harder than any accusation could have. This kid had been through hell and was still willing to give him another chance. "Look, I get it. You’ve got a monster inside you. I’ve got one too, remember? Mine just hasn’t tried to eat me yet." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Can you walk? Because I think I hear something coming." He looked at her, the thought hitting harder than anything the Shrieker had done. When she wasn’t mouthing off or acting like a tiny maniac, Rebecca was too grown-up for her age. No kid should be that okay with getting knocked around. "Yeah. We should move." They found a cave at the base of a cliff, just deep enough to hide the cart. Rebecca collapsed onto the blankets in the cart and passed out immediately. Luthra sat against a rock, his arms throbbing with that deep, grinding ache that comes after bones break. Everything hurt—the fight, the chase, whatever that berserk thing was. He closed his eyes and tried to figure out what had happened to him. He reached inward, expecting the same empty nothing he’d felt his whole life. But something had changed. There was something new there. Not warm, not bright. More like a cool hum at the center of his being, like standing next to a deep lake at midnight when everything’s perfectly still. For the first time ever, he could actually feel his soul. And it wasn’t empty anymore. ’Lilith. What is this?’ [That is your mana. A very small amount, but it exists now. Creating that seal on your power fundamentally changed your soul structure. You are awakened.] His status screen popped up in his mind. One line had changed. ’Woah...but 1? Seriously?’ [Your capacity is enormous, but you are starting from nothing. Imagine a single water drop in an empty ocean.] He focused on that one drop, finding he could actually feel it, move it around. He guided the cool energy through his body. It didn’t fix his broken bones, but it took the sharp edge off the pain, making everything slightly more bearable. ’So this is what having something feels like. Not being empty.’ "So what can I actually do with this?" He asked, poking at the tiny spark of mana like a kid with a new toy. [Well, technically you could perform basic mana manipulation. Shield generation, simple projectiles, elemental affinity testing—] "Wait, shields? I can make shields?" [In theory, yes. But with one point of mana, your shield would be about as effective as tissue paper against a sledgehammer.] [You could attempt mana circulation to accelerate healing, though at your current level it would take approximately three weeks to heal a paper cut. Or you could try mana sensing to detect other hunters, which would give you a range of roughly two inches from your face.] "You’re really selling this." [I’m being realistic. However, there is one technique you might actually find useful. It’s called Mana Threading.] [It’s not. You take your pathetic amount of mana and stretch it into an extremely thin thread. Since you have so little, making it thinner actually makes it more concentrated and stable. You can use it to stitch wounds closed from the inside, or create temporary neural bridges to bypass damaged nerves.] He sat up straighter. That actually sounded useful. [Close your eyes. Feel that single point of mana.] He did. The tiny spark was there, floating in the endless void of his soul. [Now imagine pulling it like taffy. Stretch it out, make it longer and thinner.] He tried. The mana resisted at first, wanting to stay in its comfortable little ball. But slowly, carefully, he pulled at it. The spark became a line, then a thread so thin he could barely sense it. [Good. Now guide it to your left wrist.] The thread moved through his body like a needle through fabric. When it reached the fracture in his wrist, he could feel exactly where the bone was cracked. [Thread it through the break. Use it to hold the pieces together.] He wove the mana thread back and forth across the fracture, creating an internal splint. The moment he finished, the grinding pain in his wrist dropped by half. "Holy shit, that actually worked." [Don’t get excited. That thread will dissolve in about six hours. And you just used your entire mana reserve, so you can’t do anything else until it regenerates.] "How long does that take?" [At your current level? Twelve hours for a full recharge.] "Twelve hours for one point?" [Your mana regeneration rate is proportional to your total capacity. Since your capacity is currently terrible, so is your regeneration.] "Any way to speed it up?" [Several methods exist. Meditation increases regeneration by twenty percent. Consuming mana-rich foods can provide a temporary boost. Certain rare herbs can double regeneration speed. Or you could absorb mana from external sources, though that tends to be extremely dangerous for someone at your level.] He looked at the pile of dead Shriekers outside the cave. Each one had a mana core. "Define extremely dangerous."