The pain wasn't gone.
He'd just run out of ways to measure it.
Numb was too gentle a word.
Lindarion could still feel the bruises. The missing nail. The stitch across his shoulder where flesh had split from the heat of some tool he didn't have a name for.
Every second throbbed in some corner of his body like a forgotten drumbeat.
But he could think again.
That was dangerous.
For them.
Lindarion leaned back against the far wall of the cell, the one that didn't hum when you breathed too close to it.
His breath came ragged, shallow, but steady.
'No guards this time…I think..'
That was new.
They'd stopped bothering to watch him.
Not out of mercy.
Out of confidence.
That was a mistake.
He shut his eyes.
Didn't focus on the pain.
Didn't focus on the room.
He went inward.
Down, past the bruises and torn muscle.
Past the ache of his overdrawn core.
Past even his thoughts.
Into the still part.
The part they hadn't reached.
The part they couldn't.
