Burt laid motionless in the alley, the water pooling around him, mixing with the filth from the overflowed dumpsters.
His ribs throbbed with a dull, rhythmic agony every time he inhaled, a constant reminder of Tyson's boots.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled and gave way, sending his face splashing back into the muddy puddle.
He didn't have the strength to scream. He barely had the strength to breathe.
"You ungrateful parasite."
Chris' words echoed in his mind, louder than the thunder rolling in the distance.
"Terrified of a mere scalpel? You're so pathetic."
Elizabeth's cold voice chimed in form his subconscious.
Burt closed his eyes.
They were right. He was pathetic. He knew nothing about medicine, so he let them walk all over him.
When he saw them using his mother's illness as a campaign program, he gullibly believed it was to raise awareness for those suffering the same and he had thanked them for it.
He had lost his dignity and his career was a joke. Even if he wanted to continue practicing, Tyson and Mark already broke his fingers. No hospital would hire a nurse talk more of a doctor with shaky hands.
And now, he was going to die in a pile of trash behind the very building where he had saved countless lives as an invisible pair of hands.
"Mom..." he croaked, the word scraping against his raw throat. "I'm sorry."
His hand moved instinctively to his chest, fumbling under his soaked shirt. His fingers brushed against his ring and he pulled it out.
It wasn't much. Just a simple, tarnished ring on a frayed leather cord. It looked like a piece of jun flecked with rust. It was ugly and worthless.
He knew about it being worthless becauee he'd once tried to appraise it and the guy got upset thinking he was trying to sell him something without value.
It was the only thing his mother had left him.
"Keep it safe, Burt," she had whispered on her deathbed, her hands frail and shaking. "It's been in our family for generations. It looks like nothing, but… promise me you'll never sell it. Even if you starve."
He had promised. Even when the Golds stopped paying him, even when he had to skip meals to afford bus fare, he had never pawned it.
He clutched the ring tightly in his fist, bringing it to his lips.
"I kept it, Mom," he whispered, a bitter laugh bubbling up in his chest.
A sudden spasm of pain shot through his abdomen at that moment.
Burt convulsed, his body jerking violently. He coughed, a wet, hacking sound that tore at his insides.
He retched, turning to his side as a mouthful of warm, metallic liquid spewed from his lips.
Fresh, bright red blood splattered onto the ground beside him, a handful falling on his hand
It soaked into the leather cord, coating into the emerald.
Burt wiped his mouth, his vision blurring. He waited for the cold to take him. He waited for the darkness.
But instead of cold, he felt heat.
It started small, faint warmth against his palm, like he was holding a hand warmer.
Then, it spiked.
"Ah!" Burt gasped, trying to open his hand.
The ring was burning.
It wasn't just warm; it was searing hot, like a live coal plucked from a fire.
The heat intensified, searing his skin, but when he tried to drop it, the ring refused to move. For something so small, it felt heavy, impossibly heavy, as if it were anchored to his very soul.
Hummmmm.
A low vibration resonated through the metal, traveling up his arm and vibrating in his skull.
Burt watched, wide-eyed, as the rain around him began to steam.
The blood he had coughed onto the ring didn't wash away. It absorbed. The dull emerald drank the red liquid like a thirsty man in a desert.
Cr-crack.
A tiny fissure appeared on the surface of the ring.
Then another. And another.
The rust around the emerald flaked away, dissolving into dust and the dull grey iron cracked and fell apart like a shell, revealing something underneath.
A brilliant, piercing green light burst from within the ring.
It was blinding. The alley lit up, shadows fleeing from the radiance. The ring wasn't iron.
It was jade—ancient, translucent, swirling with a milky, divine energy that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat of its own.
Burt's pain vanished. The agony in his ribs, the swelling in his face, the cold seeping into his bones—they were all washed away by the sudden, overwhelming surge of power rushing into his body.
The light engulfed him.
Time seemed to stop. The raindrops froze in mid-air.
Then, a voice boomed in his head. It wasn't a sound his ears heard, but a thought that was forced into his mind.
"Bloodline verified."
"The seal is broken."
"The Supreme Medical Saint's inheritance… is unlocking."