All Chapters of Born Without Magic, Destined to Rule All: Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
22 chapters
Chapter 021 – The Hanging Grove
The first Lava Ant had bitten him.A scream, raw and primal, built in his throat, a pressure valve demanding release. He clenched his jaw so hard he felt a tooth might crack. Tears of pure, undiluted agony welled in his eyes, blurring the faintly glowing dome above.Silence. Aeltharion’s command echoed in his mind, now a lifeline. You will not scream. You will not move.The burning spread, a wildfire contained within the single limb. It was a pain designed to break minds, to make the strongest warrior beg for mercy.Zarek, his body trembling violently, his knuckles white where he gripped his knees, threw his head back and stared blindly at the stone eye above. He did not scream. He did not move.He let the fire consume him, and in its heart, he began the terrible, agonizing work of finding his silence. The pain from the ant bite was a forge, and Zarek’s will was the metal being hammered upon its anvil. For an hour, maybe an eternity, the world was nothing but that single, burning leg.
Chapter 022 – The Crucible of Stillness
The bite.The memory of the Lava Ant’ searing venom was a beacon of reality. That pain had been real. This… this was a phantom. Aeltharion’s voice echoed, not as a command, but as a revelation. "You must learn to separate your mind from your body’s agony."This was agony. This was terror. But it was not real.With a Herculean effort of will, Zarek stopped fighting. He stopped clawing at the dead arm. He stopped trying to buck the weight off his chest. He forced his body to go limp, accepting the cold earth beneath him and the crushing weight on top of him.He let the phantom choke him.He stared up at the corpse’s hollow shroud, at the maggot now crawling towards his eye, and he did not flinch. He embraced the horror. He let the icy fingers feel as if they were crushing his vertebrae, let the lack of air burn in his lungs.And as he accepted it, as he stopped resisting the nightmare, something shifted.The pressure on his neck lessened. The cold began to recede, replaced by the famili