Revenant Slaves Chapter 48: Chapter 47: Zain The Sorry Miracle Worker

Read chapter 48 of Revenant Slaves by Zee on NovelPedia.

Chapter 47: Zain The Sorry Miracle Worker Zain felt like his head had been split open from the pain. He took a pain capsule, even though he knew it would not help. The origin of this pain could not be found inside his body, after all. His body rocked alongside the train as it passed over another patch of track the slaves had hastily repaired. Zain slowly turned his head, trying to ignore the pain, and looked at Miru. From here, it almost looked like she was peacefully sleeping. ‘If only she were.’ Zain looked around the metal train car, though even moving his head took significant effort. Miru was surrounded by her parents on either side. Off to the side of the car sat Rain in her wheelchair, and beside her was Spring, the pregnant mother they had pulled from the debris of Rain’s house. Zain could not focus on any of their faces. He could only make out rough silhouettes. The pain had now taken on the quality of being blinding. There was only one person he could actually focus on and see clearly. Miru. An essence thread connected the two of them. Zain felt Miru’s breathing turn unstable. He felt the blood rising up her throat from her chest. Miru coughed weakly, and a small trickle of blood slipped from her mouth. After that, every breath she took came as a wheeze. No one could hear Miru coughing over the train's noise, but her mother noticed immediately. She nudged Hardy and pointed toward Zain. Hardy looked at Miru for a second, then stood and walked the length of the train car toward him. “Zain, sir, Miru is coughing up blood again. You told us to wake you as soon as anything changed.” Hardy had become very respectful and subdued ever since their first interaction back in Rain’s house. That was no surprise. The hardened man now depended on Zain to save his little girl’s life. Zain strained to bring a reassuring smile to his lips. “Of course. Help me up, please.” Hardy obliged at once. He lifted Zain as if he weighed nothing and carried him over to the makeshift cot where Miru lay. Zain was not wearing his exosuit because these healing sessions usually left him so drained that he could not even walk with it on. So he had to be carried everywhere, and doing that in the exosuit would have made him weigh several hundred kilograms. That was well beyond what most men could lift. Hardy lowered Zain onto the makeshift stool he had been using before and supported his back and shoulders to keep him upright. Zain struggled to lift one arm, and Miru’s mother stepped forward and gently held it above her daughter’s chest. He could have done this through his essence from a distance, but over the past two days, through trial and error, he had begun learning more and more about how essence worked and how his aspect worked as well. Whatever had possessed his body on the day of the first quakes, as terrifying as that experience had been, watching how expertly his own body had wielded his soul essence had pushed his understanding of Soulcraft leagues ahead. He had been trying to replicate it on Miru ever since. As he understood it now, his essence reserves were still so badly exhausted that he could barely keep Miru breathing without killing himself by crossing the severance threshold, the threshold of his soul essence reserves being so thoroughly drained that his body would lose its connection to his soul. But he was learning. Learning to control it better. So, as Miru’s parents held him steady over their daughter, Zain poured essence from his hands into her chest. He got her heart beating more steadily again. He tried stitching her organs back together, adjusting her ribs, and activating his aspect the way that strange force inside him had done before. The pain bloomed again, as it always did. Zain endured it until he exhausted the last of his essence, short of dying, and blacked out once more. When he forced his eyes open again, his eyelids felt heavy, and so did his hands. The train car was no longer rocking. It seemed they had come to a st