Primordial Awakening: I Breathe Skill Points!-Chapter 100: Two of Five (3)

"What?" Kael’s voice came out strangled. Tight with fear he couldn’t suppress. He’d heard her perfectly but needed her to say something different.

"The spikes. They were covered in something." Seris’s hands hovered over the affected area without touching. Professional distance warring with personal horror. "Not just poison. Bioluminescent blood."

"What does that mean?" But he already knew. Could feel it in his shoulder. Could feel wrongness spreading like frost across glass.

Kael looked at his shoulder. Really looked at it for the first time since she’d healed the puncture wounds. At the faint blue glow spreading outward from the wound site in slow, deliberate waves. Like contamination made visible. Like infection you could watch in real-time. "I’m infected."

"The spike was contaminated. The blood got into your system when it pierced you." She touched the edge of the affected area with one finger. Gentle. Clinical. The flesh felt wrong under her touch. Too warm. Too firm. "Into your bloodstream. Your muscle tissue. Your cells."

"Can you heal it?" Desperation made his voice crack. Made him sound young and terrified. Which he was. "You healed the puncture wounds. Can’t you heal this too?"

Seris tried. Didn’t answer with words because hope mattered more than honesty right now. Poured healing magic into the affected area with everything she had left in her depleted reserves.

Golden light flowing into blue-tinged flesh. Warm against the cold wrongness spreading through his shoulder. She watched desperately for change. For reversal. For any sign her magic was working.

The blue glow receded slightly. Pulled back maybe half a centimeter from its advancing edge. One precious moment of hope blossoming in her chest. Then it resumed spreading. Slower but steady. Inexorable as tide. "It’s not responding. This isn’t damage I can heal. It’s transformation."

"What does that mean?" Though part of him already knew. Could feel it changing things inside. Rewriting him.

"Damage I can heal. I can close wounds, mend broken bones, fight bacterial infections." Her voice was climbing higher despite her attempts at control. "But this isn’t breaking your body down. It’s changing it. Rewriting what your cells think they’re supposed to be."

They stared at each other across the small space. The implications settling between them like stones dropped into deep water. Taking time to reach bottom. But definitely sinking toward terrible conclusions neither wanted to voice.

"How far will it spread?" Kael asked. The question that mattered most. The one that determined whether he lived or became something else.

"I don’t know." Medical honesty she couldn’t avoid even when kindness suggested lying. "Maybe just the shoulder. Maybe it stays localized to the injection site." She couldn’t maintain eye contact. Looked at his shoulder instead. "Maybe..."

"Maybe my whole body." Kael finished what she couldn’t say. "Maybe I turn into whatever those things were.

Seris pulled out her medical kit with hands that shook badly. Had to try twice to open the clasp. "There’s one option. Amputation. Remove the arm at the shoulder. Stop the spread before it reaches your torso."

The words hung in the air like a death sentence. Like a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all.

"Cut off my arm." Kael said it flat. No inflection. His brain processing information too terrible for emotion yet.

"Yes."

"And if we don’t?" He needed to hear the alternative stated clearly. Needed to know he’d considered all options before making this decision.

"We hope it stops spreading on its own." Seris’s voice was barely above a whisper. "Hope it’s localized. Hope you don’t transform into something that tries to kill me."

"So our options are amputation or hope and prayer." Kael almost laughed. The sound came out wrong. Brittle. "Great. Fantastic options."

"I’m sorry."

"Not your fault." He looked at his arm. The arm that had been with him his whole life. Still functional despite the injury. Still responding to his commands. Still his. For now. "What are the chances it stops on its own?"

"I don’t know." The admission cost her. "Twenty percent? Fifty? I don’t have data on alien contamination rates. I’m guessing."

He watched the blue glow spread another centimeter while they talked. Creeping toward his elbow like slow infection. Like inevitable doom. Making the decision for him with every passing second. "Cut it off," he said. Voice steadier than he felt. "Do it now before I lose the nerve."

"Kael, we should think—"

"Now, Seris. Please." His voice cracked on the last word. Control breaking. "I can feel it moving. I can feel it changing things inside me. Like something’s rewriting my cells. Cut it off now."

She pulled out his sword with trembling hands. The blade he’d been fighting with minutes ago. Now repurposed for emergency surgery. She started channeling fire magic into the metal.

The blade began to glow. First red like heated iron. Then orange like forge coals. Then white-hot like a captive star. Hot enough to cauterize as it cut. To seal blood vessels before he could bleed to death.

"Bite down on this." She handed him a leather strap from her pack. Something to clench. To scream into. "Scream if you need to. Nobody’s here to judge."

"Except you," Kael said. Trying for humor. Failing completely.

"I’m not judging. I’m terrified." Her honesty raw and complete.

"That makes two of us." He took the leather strap. Positioned it between his teeth. "Do it fast. Please."

Kael bit down hard on the leather. Tasted old sweat and travel dust and fear. Nodded once. Sharp and quick. Before he could think about it too much. Before survival instinct could override logic.

Seris positioned the heated blade against his shoulder. Where arm met torso. Where she needed to cut to ensure she removed all contaminated tissue. Her hands shook so badly she had to stop. Close her eyes. Breathe deeply three times.

Professional healer training warring with the reality of amputating someone’s arm. Without anesthesia. Without proper surgical tools. Without anything except a heated sword and desperation.

"I’m sorry," she whispered. Tears already falling. Tracking down her cheeks in clean lines through the dust and grime. "I’m so sorry."

She cut.

The blade went through muscle like heated wire through wax. The fire magic cauterizing as it sliced. Sealing blood vessels instantly. Burning nerve endings before they could transmit full pain signals. But not fast enough. Never fast enough.

The smell was immediate and horrible. Burning flesh and hair and subcutaneous fat. Things that should never burn. Things human noses weren’t designed to process. Like cooking meat mixed with worst nightmares.

Kael screamed into the leather strap. His whole body went rigid as a board. Every muscle locked simultaneously. Eyes rolling back to show only whites. Teeth clenched so hard on the leather that it cut into his gums. Blood in his mouth mixing with leather taste.

Pain beyond anything he’d imagined possible. Beyond what human nervous systems were designed to process. Beyond the scale where pain was just sensation and became instead pure existence. Pure suffering made manifest.

Seris cried while cutting. Tears falling onto the wound site. Evaporating from the heat of the blade with tiny hisses. Apologizing continuously through sobs that made her whole body shake. "I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry."

Over and over. A mantra. A prayer. A plea for forgiveness she didn’t deserve and needed desperately. Her hands steady despite the tears because they had to be. Because wavering meant worse pain. Meant jagged cuts instead of clean ones.

The blade hit bone. The scapula. The shoulder joint where humerus met body. Fire-heated metal meeting calcium and marrow and the hard parts of human anatomy.

She had to saw. Had to apply real force. Had to lean into it with her body weight. The sound was terrible. Worse than the smell. Worse than the screaming. The grinding of metal on bone that resonated through Kael’s entire skeleton. That he could feel in his teeth.

His screaming was getting weaker. Consciousness slipping. Body trying to shut down to escape the pain. Trying to flee into unconsciousness where agony couldn’t follow.

Finally, mercifully, the bone gave way. The last connection severed. The arm came free.

Fell to the stone floor with a wet, heavy sound. The sound of meat hitting stone. Of something that used to be part of a person becoming separate. Becoming waste.

Seris threw it as far as she could. Away from them both. Away from Kael. The arm tumbling through the air before landing five meters away. The blue glow still spreading through dead tissue. Still transforming flesh that no longer had a body to corrupt.

The stump was cauterized. Sealed with burned flesh instead of bleeding freely. Black and red and terrible but not lethal. Not bleeding out. Kael had passed out finally. Small mercy in unconsciousness. His body giving him the escape his mind couldn’t achieve.

Seris used every remaining bit of healing magic she had. Everything left in her depleted reserves. Stabilizing him. Ensuring the cauterization held. Making sure shock didn’t kill him after surviving the amputation itself.

Pouring golden light into traumatized tissue. Reinforcing the seal. Preventing infection from setting in. Keeping his heart beating when shock wanted to stop it.

Twenty minutes later, Kael woke. His eyes opened slowly. Confusion first. Then memory. Then the phantom sensation of an arm that wasn’t there anymore.

One-armed. In shock. But alive. Not transforming.

"Thank you," he whispered. Voice weak as paper. Barely audible. "I would have died. Or worse."

"You pushed me out of the way from the spikes," Seris said. Her own voice rough from crying. From screaming apologies. "We’re even."

"I don’t feel even." He looked at where his arm used to be. The cauterized stump. "I feel considerably less than I was."

"Bad joke timing."

"Only timing I have left."

They rested. Forty minutes total. Dangerous to stay in one place but absolutely necessary. Kael needed time to process. To accept. To grieve what he’d lost.

Seris monitored him constantly. Checking for signs of shock advancing. For infection. For the blue glow reappearing. It didn’t. The amputation had worked.

Finally they stood. Kael swaying badly but upright. His balance completely wrong without the arm’s weight. Seris supporting him with one arm around his waist.

They continued forward. Slower than before. More careful. Desperate to reunite with the others. To not be alone anymore.

The maze eventually stopped shifting. Like it had for Group A. Recognition that the trial was complete. A clear path appeared. Stairs descending into darkness deeper than anything above.

They descended toward convergence. Hoping the others were alive. Hoping Tank and Whisper and Zeph had survived their own trials. Hoping they’d all survive what waited at the bottom.

Kael one-armed. Combat effectiveness drastically reduced. But alive. Still himself. Still human.

That counted for something. Had to count for something.

In the darkness ahead, something howled. The same sound they’d heard before. Closer now. Much closer.

The Harvester knew they were coming.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​