The cell was darker than before.
Not because the light had changed.
Because something in him had.
Lindarion lay motionless on the floor.
Not asleep. Not unconscious. Just still.
The stone beneath him was cold. Slick with blood that no longer bothered to clot.
Some of it was his.
Not all of it.
The taste of copper coated the back of his throat like something spilled and never scrubbed clean. A single thread of red still ran from his split lip to the floor, curving across his chin like punctuation.
A period at the end of a sentence that no one had the nerve to finish.
His right shoulder was dislocated. His ribs were cracked—at least three, maybe more. His wrist was broken in two places.
'…Two tools ago,' he thought, distantly.
That part of his mind—the one that catalogued injuries like class assignments—was still working.
Everything else?
Felt like static.
His hands twitched. Once.
A flicker of motion like his nerves were still checking in.
[Mana Perception]
