The orange-haired girl remained seated beside Miracle, her raw cedar bow clenched so tightly her knuckles left small, bloodless dents in the wood. She had been waiting for James for a good bit now, and she was starting to get worried. She impatiently questioned to herself what was taking James so long to find food.
Glancing down at Miracle, she saw that he was still sleeping peacefully. She smiled and couldn't resist poking his cheek with the tip of her finger, letting out a tiny, structural giggle. To her, he just looked so soft and huggable. She often wondered if there was something wrong with her, and that's why Miracle didn't seem to like her all that much sometimes. She still somewhat remembered her parents and how they often hugged her and each other to show affection.
"Mama… Pa."
She thought of her parents, her lips twitching a little as she realized she couldn't even remember their faces now. All she could remember was the blurry, loving impression of a woman with her same vibrant orange hair and a tall man with gentle brown eyes, before the vision violently switched to the horrific image of both of them on the ground dead, and people in strange robes taking her to that place. Tears welled in Sylvia's green eyes, spilling over her pale cheeks.
Subconsciously seeking any anchor to stave off the panic, she slid down into the snow and buried her face directly into Miracle's curly green hair. It was soft—unexpectedly so—and smelled faintly of the rich moss beds she grew for comfort. Around his neck, the Moon-Sapped Pinecone given to her by the forest hummed with a soft, rhythmic green-gold light. It radiated a localized wave of soothing thermodynamic heat, filtering out the lingering laboratory nightmares from Miracle's comatose brain while keeping the creeping sub-zero frost entirely off his skin.
Suddenly, a violent shudder rippled up Sylvia's spine.
She scrambled backward, her pupils dilating as she scanned the perimeter tree line. Nothing moved. The cedar branches were static. Desperate for information, she pressed her bare palm against the freezing bark of the pine tree behind her, attempting to call out to the goddess who had given her the bow.
"Forest…" she whimpered.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, three massive cedar trunks began to aggressively weep thick, blood-red sap.
It wasn't an abandonment; it was a localized omen. The forest was giving her a visual danger signal. Sylvia spun around, but her eyes found nothing. The snowdrifts surrounding Miracle's resting frame remained flawlessly smooth, entirely undisturbed. Yet, an invisible weight was dragging across the clearing.
It was the Keelut.
(It looks like this)
It stood nearly two and a half meters long from nose to tail, its giant canine frame so unnaturally thin and gaunt that its ribs protruded like skeletal fingers beneath its skin. It appeared malnourished, a deceptive illusion masking an incredibly dense, corded musculoskeletal architecture. Its hide was a bruised, leathery midnight-black, completely hairless save for sparse, tattered patches of matted fur ringing its paws, ears, and salivating jaws. It stalked toward the sleeping psychic, leaving no tracks; the snow beneath its weight did not compress. Not a single crystal of frost shifted.
It left no physical tracks, made no acoustic sound, and emitted no breathing signature. It was an apex hunter, waiting hours for the exact right moment.
But its shadow betrayed its geometry. Sylvia didn't look at the snow; she looked at the light. A twisted, elongated canine silhouette suddenly warped across the tree trunks several meters to the left of the creature's actual physical location.
Thwack!
Sylvia loosed the string on pure, blind instinct. The stone-tipped arrow hissed through the twilight air, slicing a clean path through the empty fog and burying itself deep into the snow inches from the Keelut's true, invisible path.
The creature stopped, realizing its absolute stealth had been cracked by a child, and let out a low, frustrated, and deeply unsettling growl. It partially materialized out of the spiritual layer of reality, its small, unnervingly bright eyes burning with a ravenous yellow luminescence through the gray mist. Its jaws split open, distending considerably farther than any normal canine's to reveal rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth slick with acidic saliva.
Sylvia immediately threw herself directly between the titan and Miracle's limp frame, her hands trembling violently as she slotted a second arrow. Her body was under the severe, crushing weight of the passive aura the beast gave off.
"Stay away!" she screamed, her voice cracking with terror, but she refused to back down.
She fired a sloppy shot, but the Keelut didn't just stand there. It executed a swift burst-glide to the side, easily evading the projectile and launching a savage, airborne pounce straight at her throat. Sylvia didn't have time to pull another arrow, so she threw her body to the left, tumbling through the drifts as the monster's snapping jaws missed her ear by an inch. Scrambling back to her feet, she thrust her palms toward the ground to force a root-bind, but the Keelut was already recovery-pivoting on its hindquarters. The moment her small roots made contact with its hairless, bruised skin, the plants rotted instantly into ash.
But on pure instinct, she fired a golden arrow from one of her seeds, sending four large, glowing green-golden roots slamming into the beast and forcing it back. They continued to relentlessly attack the creature, but it quickly dodged through her unrefined attacks, biting chunks off the vines. While it was busy dealing with that distraction, an arrow managed to penetrate its shoulder blade, making it whimper like a dog before it was heavily smacked by one of the roots.
Sylvia aggressively fired two more rapid, panicked shots just to force a physical distance between them. The Keelut easily twisted its malnourished frame mid-air, utilizing the thick pine trunks as tactical cover. Realizing her shots were missing, Sylvia dropped her bow, hooked her arms under Miracle's small, eight-year-old body, and tried to run. She had to find James. She couldn't handle this alone.
The Keelut tore through the last of the roots and activated its Deathly Presence aura. A violent wave of neural interference slammed into Sylvia's brain, causing severe dizziness to strike behind her eyes. Her knees buckled under the sudden, crushing mental weight, and intense muscle spasms shot through her thighs. She stumbled, dropping Miracle into the snow drifts as a wave of violent nausea blurred her vision.
Seeing the defenseless body of Miracle lying completely exposed, she raked her bloody fingers back into her leather pouch, pulled out another Golden Seed, and slammed both hands into the frozen ground.
"Hide him!" she screamed internally.
Large, massive cedar roots quickly erupted from the bedrock, curling around Miracle's sleeping body like a dense, protective dome. The black hound leaped, its massive jaws snapping shut a millisecond before the vegetated barrier fully closed, leaving a heavy dent in the wood but keeping the psychic safely shielded.
Sylvia scrambled backward through the mud, her small hands shaking as she retrieved her bow and clumsy arrows. She fired another frantic shot, but the Keelut simply phased out of the spatial layer using its Spirit Step, letting the projectile bury itself uselessly into the snow drifts.
Her eyes frantically followed the elongated canine shadow warping across the left-hand cedar trunks. The real beast was already descending from her blind spot, its massive jaws wide open.
"Stay away!" she shrieked, her voice cracking in a panic.
She pulled an arrow, desperately firing it into the ground beneath its descending paws to summon a cluster of frozen briars, but the moment the vegetation contacted its hairless skin, the plants withered away into ash. The beast lunged. Sylvia threw her body desperately into the snowdrifts, but her complete lack of combat agility left her wide open.
Before she could recover her equilibrium, the Keelut's claws tore down across her shoulder in a savage, sweeping strike.
The jagged talons sliced deep through her fur wraps, carving a bloody scratch across her collarbone. Sylvia let out a sharp, agonizing shriek of genuine pain, her blood instantly pooling onto the pristine white snowdrifts. The wound burned with an icy, supernatural numbness; the creature's strike carried a spiritual bleeding effect that began to systematically drain her active stamina.
The beast unleashed a mighty, supersonic howl. The concussive shockwave violently blasted Sylvia backward several meters into a rock face, while simultaneously splintering two nearby pine trees and tearing a gaping hole straight through the protective wooden dome holding Miracle.
The monster looked down through the shattered wood. Sensing Miracle's catastrophic mental exhaustion via its Death Omen instinct, the Keelut decided the screaming girl was too much tedious trouble. It split its massive jaws wide open, intending to systematically crush Miracle's skull and absorb the residual extra-dimensional psychic energy echoing within his soul.
But Miracle was not entirely defenseless.
A green psychokinetic blast exploded directly from his still-sleeping frame. The concussive esper wave hit the Keelut square in the torso, sending its two-and-a-half-meter frame flying backward to crash heavily into the mud. The beast shakily got back up onto its paws, coughing and wheezing out dark, corrupted blood.
It let out a series of aggressive barks, its yellow eyes burning with absolute malice as it charged toward Miracle again.
Seeing the monster close the distance toward Miracle's soft, defenseless body shattered something fundamental inside Sylvia's mind. The fragile, regressed child persona vanished entirely. The traumatic memories of her parents' deaths, the sterile cages, and the fear of isolation melted into a singular, volatile predatory drive.
"No!" she roared, her voice dropping into a deep, rhythmic, and entirely unnatural tone.
She didn't reach for her bow. She reached into her leather pouch, pulled out three single Golden Seeds provided by the forest goddess, and violently slammed her bloody palm directly onto the frozen earth.
BOOM!
The ground ruptured violently. A colossal, churning mass of iron-hard black veins and massive cedar roots laced with jagged, venomous thorns erupted from the bedrock like striking serpents. The heavy, petrified wooden branches slammed directly into the Keelut's ribcage with the force of an oncoming freight train, shattering its dense bones and throwing it out of the air.
The monster shrieked, attempting to use its Spirit Step to partially shift its physiology into the spiritual layer to let the wood pass through its organs, but the sheer density of Sylvia's chaotic life force nullified the ability. The black, thorn-laced roots twisted and multiplied exponentially, tracking the beast's spiritual vibration through the ground.
They clamped down onto its hairless limbs, wrapping around its neck and chest in a suffocating, inescapable cage of raw kinetic tension. The Keelut was violently pinned flat against the muddy earth, its leathery skin tearing against the massive thorns as its spiritual energy began to aggressively leak into the soil.
Sylvia bounded across the clearing like a wild predator, her orange hair flying wildly over her shoulders. She snatched one of the salvaged daggers from their supply pack, dropped down directly onto the pinned monster's chest, her face frozen into an eerie, vacant mask of absolute violence.
With a primal, guttural scream of fury, Sylvia brutally and continuously drove the dagger straight down into the Keelut's hairless neck.
"DIE. DIE. DIE!" she screamed.
The faces of the masked laboratory scientists flashed vividly behind her eyelids; with every rhythmic strike of the blade, she was picturing their faces on the other end of the dagger.
The monster thrashed beneath her, its small yellow eyes rolling back in pure, unadulterated agony as black, corrupted blood geysered out of its ruptured throat, splashing across her face, hair, and winter wraps. It tried to emit a final Death Howl to shatter her eardrums, but Sylvia didn't give it a single millisecond of breathing space. She continuously slammed the blade down, twisting the steel deeper into its vertebrae, breaking the cartilage, and hacking through its life core until the titan's massive leathery frame finally went completely limp beneath her weight, its residual energy dissolving silently into the sub-zero wind.
The clearing dropped back into an absolute, heavy silence.
Sylvia sat perched atop the dead beast's chest, her breath coming in ragged, heavy plumes of white steam. The brilliant, predatory green glow in her eyes slowly receded, turning back to their natural, wide color. She looked down at her blood-soaked hands, then turned her head toward the tree where Miracle still lay snoring softly, entirely oblivious to the absolute meat-grinder that had just occurred around his perimeter.
Weakly, she climbed off the carcass, her shoulder burning with pain as her short-fused adrenaline began to die down. She dragged her feet across the crimson snow, collapsing back down directly beside the psychic, and tightly wrapped her small, shivering arms around his waist—determined to act as his human shield until the very end.
The branch of a tree grew around Sylvia's arm and began healing her mangled shoulder, and a green, transparent arm gently cupped her cheek.
"I'm so sorry, little fawn," the plant woman whom Miracle had seen whispered, looking at the two children in pity, but she disappeared the moment Sylvia opened her eyes.
Some Minutes Later
The tired and injured James was dragging the two mangled deer toward his companions. Well, one whole deer and the bloody remains of the other. His body still hurt a lot, but at least now he had a full stomach, giving him some energy.
"Argh, they were supposed to be right here!" he gritted his teeth in frustration, looking at the identical corridors of pine.
Realizing his raw tracking skills had let him get lost, James decided to follow his nose. Suddenly, a thick, coppery scent hit his nostrils. Blood. One scent carried the foul, rotting trace of a monster, but the other his eyes widened in instant panic. He dropped both deer carcasses into the drifts and took off sprinting, ignoring the sharp spikes of pain rattling through his bruised ribs with every step.
James burst into the clearing and skidded to a halt. Several ancient pine trees were snapped in half, and loose stone arrows littered the dirt. Instinctively, he side-stepped as a lone arrow whistled past his cheek.
He whipped his head around. Sylvia was standing near a cedar trunk, her bow raised and pointing an arrow straight at his chest. But her physical state made his breath hitch. She was completely drenched in black blood, and her shoulder wrap was soaked through with deep, fresh crimson.
"WOW, HEY! SYLVIA, PUT THAT DOWN!" he yelled, throwing his hands up.
The girl blinked, the brilliant green light completely leaving her eyes as her normal sanity returned.
"J-James?" she uttered softly.
"Yeah, it's me. What the hell happened to you?" James asked frantically. He marched over, carefully grabbing her good shoulder, and she simply pointed a trembling finger at the dead death hound. The carcass was already giving off a terrible, foul smell that went far beyond normal decomposition—a sickening scent of spiritual rot. "Ugh, it smells disgusting. You killed that thing?"
She shakily nodded her head, but then her small fists tightened. Gritting her teeth, she used every ounce of her remaining strength to violently shove James away. Under normal circumstances, her child-like frame would barely move him, but with James already physically exhausted and injured from his own battle, he lost his footing and crashed straight into the snow drifts.
"HEY! WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?!" he barked, rubbing his head.
"LATE!" she yelled back, hot tears finally spilling over her blood-stained cheeks as she glared at him. "YOU LATE! WE WOULD HAVE DIED!"
"Hey, it wasn't my fault! I found the deer, but I had to fight a massive sixteen-meter stone monster just to keep them!" James defended himself aggressively, scrambling back to his feet and shoving her back just hard enough to make her sit down in the drifts.
Sylvia flinched, glaring up at him, but as she looked closer, she noticed the deep claw marks and soot stains covering his bare chest. Her volatile anger softened slightly, shifting back into a moody, child-like pout. Reaching down, she pettily scooped up a handful of snow and threw it straight into his face, making the dragon boy let out an annoyed, low growl.
"Where food?" she asked, looking at his empty hands.
"Oh, right. I left them back that way," he muttered, gesturing toward the trail.
Before he could turn around, a faint green light caught his attention. He watched in absolute disbelief as Miracle's small body began to slowly levitate a few inches off the snow drifts, hovering in place. James deadpanned. "Are you serious? He slept through this entire fight?"
"Yes…" Sylvia grumbled, sliding back down to sit close to the psychic. "Get food… I-I'll watch Miracle."
"Yeah." James waved her off, turning his head back toward the trail. But before he walked away, he looked back at Miracle's smiling, peaceful face. A genuine wave of irritation hit his chest. 'I wonder what he is dreaming about right now?'
Miracle's Dream
"Oh, thank God!" Miracle let out a massive, ragged sigh of relief.
He was staring directly at a bulky computer monitor inside a brightly lit, comfortable bedroom belonging to his sister. On the screen, his official IGCSE exam results were displayed in a neat grid. A few high As and a solid bunch of strong Bs.
"Congrats, little bro-bro! I knew you could do it!"
A pair of warm hands suddenly clapped onto his shoulders. It was his eldest sister, Vanessa. She leaned down, flashing a brilliant, proud smile, and began playfully pinching and squishing his cheeks. She was a woman in her 22 years of age.
(She like this).
"I wasn't worried," Miracle grumbled, trying to swat her hands away, though his lips were twitching into a rare, genuine smile.
"Oh, please, Mimi! I think the whole house could hear your heart beating," Vanessa snickered. "I was a little scared it might explode right out of your chest."
"Well, at least I don't have to repeat Form 5 like you did," he retorted smoothly, ducking a swift, playful smack from her.
"Got jokes today, ati? Keep that up and I'll tell Dad to send back that PS5," she teased.
"Wait, Dad bought me a PS5?!" Miracle asked, his jaw dropping.
"Dad said he'll buy one for you when you passed your exams, didn't he?" she smiled, suddenly holding a pristine PlayStation 5 package which she had pulled out of nowhere.
"Ain't no way." Miracle inspected the package in complete disbelief.
Her expression softened gently. "Mimi, I know your relationship with Dad hasn't been the best for a good bit, but he wanted to let you know that he was really sorry about everything."
Miracle was taken completely aback by that. Their father said that? Their dad seriously opened up and said all that?
"Oh, stop making that face, Mimi, you look exactly like Mom," Vanessa laughed, nudging his shoulder. "Now get out of my room and go enjoy your babyish games. You deserve it."
She handed him the PS5 and smiled warmly. "But really, little bro-bro, I'm proud of you. We all are. Including Leticia and Indira. I don't know about Christopher, though."
"I-I…" Miracle tried his absolute best to hold back his emotions; if his sister ever saw him getting all sappy, she would never let him hear the end of it.
He looked down, and suddenly, the PlayStation 5 package vanished. His small fists were now covered in heavy black leather gloves.
"Huh?"
The room dissolved instantly, replaced by a massive, pitch-black void. Kneeling in a neat, silent row directly in front of him were three teenagers dressed in secondary school uniforms. Miracle recognized them instantly—his three primary Form 3 bullies from secondary school, the ones who had made his academic life a living, breathing hell before his breakdown. They were bound in heavy ropes, their faces completely covered by thick, blood-stained white blindfolds.
"Asa, Miracle, please! We're sorry, we're sorry for everything… Please!" the ringleader of his bullies begged, but the desperate apology went in one ear and completely left the other.
All Miracle could think about was the five long years he had endured—all the insults, the systemic humiliation, and the moments it turned physical, all because he was the youngest and just had different interests compared to everyone else. His childhood identity—what Miracle called his ugly face—lay frozen in the center of it all.
This time, there would be no one to hold him back from fully kicking their asses into a permanent coma—no teachers, no authority figures, and no crowd to judge him. Leaning entirely into a dark, intoxicating wave of sadistic glee, Miracle raised his gloved fist and swung straight into the bully's face.
Inner World
Suddenly, he found himself crashing flat onto his back on the cold concrete rooftop of a massive skyscraper within his inner mind space. Above him, the purple cosmic clouds and swirling galaxies of his psyche drifted slowly across the space-ceiling, silent and indifferent. But the layout was blanketed in light frost, reminding him of cold snow settings he had seen on screens.
"Argh, fuck man," Miracle muttered.
He slowly got up and stretched a little bit, shaking off the phantom adrenaline.
"At least you had a nice dream?" Tinashe asked.
She was standing near the edge of the rooftop, her long black coat and usual dress swaying slightly in the phantom inner wind of his subconscious. Her purple galaxy eyes were fixed on him, filled with a deep, quiet worry.
"Yeah, but they always end at the good part," he muttered, sucking his teeth with a sharp Malawian click as he flexed his fingers.
"That was your older sister, Vanessa, right?" Tinashe asked, walking over to join him. Miracle gave a rough grunt of approval, prompting a warm smile from the spirit. "She seemed quite nice."
Miracle clicked his tongue sharply. "Tsk. Don't let that little dream fool you. She was a rage-baiting pain in the ass."
"Well, that's a contradictory reaction," Tinashe chuckled, her shoulders shaking slightly. "What did she do to make her such a pain in your ass, Mira?"
"She was always mocking me and annoyingly touching me until I started chasing her to get her to stop, constantly coming up with nicknames," Miracle grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. "She was the main head of treating me like a personal dress-up doll until I turned eight years old."
"That just sounds like a big sister who loves playing with her little brother," chuckled Tinashe.
"Well, she could have chosen to do it better than constantly rage-baiting me," Miracle grumbled.
"Don't be like that, Mimi~," Tinashe teased, her voice dropping into a gentle, singing cadence. "From what I saw in the ripples of that dream, you seemed pretty fond of her. Chala chimodzi sichiswa nsabwe—a single finger cannot crush a louse, Miracle. You two pushed each other because that is what siblings do."
"That proverb makes absolutely no sense out of context," Miracle shook his head firmly. "Also, don't ever call me Mimi again."
He quickly changed the subject, and Tinashe noted the shift, knowing better than to dwell on his family wounds. "So, how long have I been out?"
"Right now, it should be about eight hours," she answered seriously.
"Are you serious?!" Miracle's jaw dropped.
His Sacred Gear simply nodded, her purple eyes deadpan. Miracle aggressively rubbed his hands through his green hair in absolute frustration. Eight hours blind. Eight hours completely defenseless in an apex mythological ecosystem.
"Dammit," he swore, his voice cracking. "So what the hell happened while I was out?"
"Well, I couldn't tell exactly what was going on out there, but… the dragon child's signature moved entirely away from you and the girl," Tinashe explained, her expression tightening into a grim mask. "He went to hunt, leaving the perimeter thin. An hour or so later, an anomaly entered. It was an invisible stalker, a phantom shadow canine cloaked in a heavy aura of rot and spiritual death."
Miracle's ringed green eyes instantly sharpened. "Wait… you're telling me Sylvia fought that thing alone?"
"Yes… But do not fret, from what I could make out, she took care of it," Tinashe confirmed, her tone carrying a heavy, profound respect.
"Damn, I can't believe I was out for that long," Miracle muttered, his mind racing through the tactical failures of their camp setup.
"It could have been a lot more if it wasn't for that amulet-pinecone the girl gave you," Tinashe added, pointing toward his physical chest. "It has been refreshing your physical body as you slept, filtering out the laboratory strain, and it might have been responsible for giving you those more pleasant dreams of your home. But you have overextended your rest. I hate to be the one to say 'I told you so'…"
Miracle just clicked his teeth a little, rolling his eyes hard.
Tinashe instantly placed her hands on her hips, her maternal, stern face locking him down. "Oh, no you don't! You do not have the right to give me attitude right now, mwana iya! I warned you what would happen if you ran your brain on zero sleep!"
"Oh, really?" Miracle sassy replied, shooting her a defiant look. "Well, what the hell did you expect me to do? We were being hunted."
"How about, maybe you should work out a night shift system for the three of you?" Tinashe lectured, her voice firm. "You must implement a watch rotation to ensure everyone gets enough sleep to keep their vessels stable, while making sure at least one of you is keeping watch at all times."
"Yeah, and how do you expect me to execute that?" Miracle shot back, gesturing wildly. "I don't think either of those two are capable of telling time or reading a digital clock."
Tinashe smiled softly, the sternness in her posture giving way to a gentle, guiding grace as she pointed a finger directly at her own chest.
"I can keep the time for you from here," she offered gently. "If one shift is over, I'll alert your consciousness directly so you can wake up and rotate the watch."
Miracle weighed her words, the tension slowly leaving his small frame as he recognized the sheer, practical utility of her plan. "Fine. I'll work out the shift rotation with the others when I open my eyes, then."
"That's all I ask of you, stubborn child," Tinashe said softly, her form beginning to slowly dissolve into a beautiful cloud of shimmering purple sparks as his consciousness prepared to jump back into his physical container.
Outside the Inner World
Miracle's eyes shot open, and he was greeted by the darkening dusk skies. But his body suddenly started feeling freezing shivers, so he quickly stood up from the frozen ground.
Suddenly, the smell of burnt meat evaded his nostrils.
"Oh, no," he muttered under his breath, his ringed green eyes narrowing as he turned toward the source of the smoke.
Not too far from him, James and Sylvia were huddled near the sputtering campfire, staring blankly at several large, charred pieces of deer meat. But it wasn't the terribly cooked meal that was his focus, but how absolutely beat up the two looked.
"Sup, guys," Miracle said, floating silently toward them.
"Gah!" James jumped in sheer surprise, his short-fused instincts kicking in as he violently lunged forward and threw a heavy punch straight at Miracle's face.
Miracle didn't even blink. With a flick of his wrist, his psychokinesis caught the dragon boy mid-air, stripping away his momentum and leaving him dangling awkwardly a foot off the ground.
"Stop doing that and put me down!" James yelled, kicking his legs aggressively in the empty air. But the sudden shouting forced a sharp, ragged cough from his chest, and his bare shoulders sagged with visible exhaustion.
Seeing the genuine fatigue lines on the kid's face, Miracle sighed and gently lowered him back down onto the snow.
"Miracle awake!" Sylvia cheered, and instead of her usual attempts to lunge through his shields for a hug, she handed him a large piece of burnt meat with a wide smile.
"Ah… thanks," Miracle muttered, accepting the blackened chunk. He was far too starving to care about how burnt it was, sinking his teeth into the tough, smoky flesh.
The girl's current state made him cringe a bit. She was covered in dried blood, had fresh bruises, and her right shoulder wrap was a bit messed up, exposing a nasty laceration.
"So…" Miracle began, gesturing with the burnt meat toward the broken trees around their perimeter. "What the hell were you guys fighting to do well all this?"
The two immediately began talking over each other, their voices climbing in a chaotic wave of explanations. James barked about a massive wood-stone giant that tried to steal his kill, while Sylvia waved her small hands, shrieking about a terrifying, invisible shadow hound that left no tracks and tried to bite off her ears.
'Oh Christ, I'm going to crash out,' Miracle swore internally.
"On the children, wielder?" Tinashe questioned from within.
'What? No! On this entire situation,' he shot back, rubbing his temples as a sharp headache flared behind his ringed eyes. 'We really need to get out of this fucking forest fast while we still have all our limbs intact.'
"Well, IF and I emphasize on IF that raven's map can be trusted, you won't take long to reach that mark, though I would advise you to be ready for any trickery, so we should come up with a backup plan," Tinashe advised sensibly.
'Yeah, I know,' Miracle thought grimly, watching Sylvia wince as she tried to adjust her bow wrap. 'I'm going to need them healed up a little bit before we move, because who knows what other crazy monsters are out there. Good thing they both naturally heal faster than regular humans, but with wounds like this, it might take a bit of a while. I really wish I knew how to heal.'
"Don't worry, I can help you with that," Tinashe offered.
'How?'
"Remember when you fought those little people, and some of them glowed bright when you attacked them with your psychokinesis?" Tinashe explained, her tone becoming instructional and serious. "Well, this is how I can best put it: those ghouls were obviously corrupted souls trapped in the forest, but their souls were tied in a sort of knots keeping them from moving on.
Your powers seemingly reached their chi or life force in terms of the power system from the media you consumed and untangled those knots, releasing them. Chi is not just spiritual, but it can be biological and form life-force grids for living beings. If you carefully apply your power like how you were practicing in the cave, and focus more on giving energy than controlling it, you could heal and amplify them."
Miracle took a deep breath, letting his hovering feet sink firmly back into the snow drifts. He looked over at the two battered kids.
"Hey, James. Sylvia. Come here for a sec," Miracle called out to them. "I'm going to try to heal you."
"Heal?" Sylvia questioned, tilting her head in complete confusion as she blinked her wide, green eyes.
"Oh, right," Miracle muttered, realizing her erased vocabulary didn't include basic medical terms. "It means I'm going to fix your skin and make the hurting stop."
James's blond eyebrows instantly shot up in absolute disbelief. "Since when the hell can you do that?"
"I just figured it out," Miracle replied, his voice flat. "Now, unless you want to keep walking around with bruised ribs, stand still and let me co—I mean, work."
They both sat directly in front of Miracle, and he began the process. His green aura surrounded the two of them and began implementing the same concepts from his control exercises, with his psionic threads wrapping around them, making glowing green circuits appear on their skin. The threads reached inside their internal energy and chi, and instead of dominating them, Miracle focused on giving power like a personal charger.
"Gah!" James violently flinched, letting out a sharp, guttural grunt as his teeth grated together. Sylvia let out a tiny, frightened shriek, her small body going entirely rigid against the drifts.
The sensation wasn't a soothing warmth due to the fact that Miracle was winging it a bit, and his psychokinesis felt incredibly heavy and intrusive. It felt as though an invisible, blunt pair of pliers had plunged straight beneath their skin, aggressively dragging their internal fluids, veins, and muscle fibers back together by force. The sheer pressure of the psychic engine manually compressing their cellular structures was deeply uncomfortable, making their flesh itch and burn with a bizarre, localized heat.
"Steady, Miracle! You are gripping too hard and adding too much!" Tinashe coached him urgently, her voice ringing clearly inside his splitting headache. "Be more gentle, especially with the girl. Her vessels are a bit more delicate."
Miracle gritted his teeth as he felt some of his physical strength leaving him during the process, but he saw some of their injuries disappearing, so there was at least clear progress being made.
The green emerald aura vanished.
The healing was incredibly sloppy, incomplete, and far from perfect. Sylvia's deep shoulder laceration was no longer oozing blood, but it hadn't magically vanished; the psychokinetic compression had simply forced the jagged edges together, leaving a thick, angry red welt that would look like an ugly scar until her refreshing dryad biology could properly knit it closed over the next few days. James's chest scratches were sealed shut with dried, darkened plasma, though his inner muscles still throbbed with heavy, deep-tissue bruising.
"There. Not the best, but that will do," Miracle grumbled, his voice cracking with fatigue. "So, how do you two feel?"
"Not hurting!" Sylvia energetically jumped up and down.
"Yeah, I feel great!" James cheered, instantly dropping into a proud handstand. But just like Sylvia, the sudden movement made him flinch from slight, throbbing muscle pains.
Before they could hurt themselves further, Miracle smoothly levitated both of them an inch off the ground to force them to stop moving around.
"Hey, take it easy. I'm still entirely new at this, so I didn't completely fix you two," he warned, placing them back down gently on the logs. "Now let me eat and refuel. There's something high-utility I need to talk to you both about."
Author note:
Hey sorry it took a while to get the chapter out I was a bit focused one organizing stuff to return back to school, but I try to be faster with the updates. Anyway like usual don't be shy to leave a chapter or complete review experiencing your thoughts on the story, or ideas you would like to see. Also drop a power stone if you can