Revenant Slaves Chapter 42: Chapter 41: Zain

Read chapter 42 of Revenant Slaves by Zee on NovelPedia.

Chapter 41: Zain Zain woke with a violent start. The first thing he saw was Rain’s face hovering above him, drawn tight with exhaustion and alarm. Beside her was Tayyab, one of the rebel soldiers, still crouched near him with a white medical case open at his feet. Both of them looked genuinely startled to see his eyes open. They clearly hadn’t expected him to wake up. Zain’s heart was racing. A sharp pain tore through his chest, deep and wrong, nothing like the ordinary pain of bruises or broken flesh. It seemed to originate from somewhere deeper in his body, as if something beneath his ribs had been split open and left burning. He tried sitting up. Nothing happened. He tried again, harder this time, and the same awful truth greeted him. His body would not answer. He could feel it, vaguely, distantly, but he could not move it. It was as though he were trapped somewhere behind his own eyes, a helpless observer locked inside someone else’s skin. Panic seized him. His thoughts lurched wildly for an explanation, and for some reason, instinct guided him inward. He focused on his soul. There it was. That obscure presence, barely comprehensible, barely visible, and yet undeniably real. It remained where it always was, just beyond understanding. Threads of essence were still being drawn from it, and they glowed with a strange purity. That essence... it wasn’t how his essence usually was. It didn’t even feel like it was his own. His own essence had always seemed meager to him, dim and unimpressive, weak compared to the more refined manifestations he had heard described by the Imams. But what he saw now was different. These threads were bright, beautiful, and potent in a way that made his own usual attempts at Soulcraft feel almost pathetic in comparison. But they were undoubtedly coming from his own soul. And then he saw something else. A single thread. It was thinner than the others, so faint it was nearly invisible. It stretched upward from his soul and vanished into the sky, out of sight, out of comprehension. Zain froze. Why had he never noticed that before? He didn’t get to think about it for long. Because suddenly, he moved. Not by choice. Not by command. His body simply began to move. His exhausted soul had only a handful of threads left to give. He could feel that much clearly now. Something had happened beneath the rubble with Ash and Rain. Something that had drained him almost to emptiness. It had burned through his already poor reserves and left him with barely enough essence to sustain himself. And worst of all, he had no memory of using it. The Imams had taught him what little he knew of Soulcraft. They had warned him of overreaching. But nothing they had ever said resembled this. Never once had he heard of a weaver exhausting himself to the brink of death with no memory of the act itself. The threads that remained weren’t enough to wrap around his whole body. They barely clung to him, wrapping one hand, one knee, and the opposite foot. That alone should have been impossible for him. He had never been able to weave so precisely before in his life. Even in his alarm, some part of him observed the changes with fascinated horror. But fascination quickly gave way to panic when he realized he wasn’t the one doing any of it. He wasn’t directing the threads. He wasn’t issuing the commands. He was just there. Watching. Then he felt the threads spasm, pulling at his limbs, making him crawl. That was when a second realization hit him. He wasn’t wearing his exosuit. The thought seemingly reignited his senses because he felt Mortrum’s gravity with brutal clarity, crushing down on his bones and joints. Every inch of him screamed in pain. His mouth, however, didn’t move; the screams wouldn’t come out. Zain cursed whatever was controlling him. If it wanted to steal his body, steal his essence, and drag him around like a puppet, why leave him the pain? Why leave him trapped inside the suffering? As if in answer, the agony dulled almost at