St Chaos Healer

Ch 91 - An Unfair Fight

I woke to the sound of ragged, agonized whimpers.

Pain surged through every nerve, sharp and relentless, pinning me in place. My body refused to move. I couldn't even scream—whether from sheer exhaustion or some cruel impossibility, I didn't know. My breath came in shallow, uneven gasps, my chest rising and falling in stuttering intervals.

The groan came again, low and guttural, from somewhere behind me—a sound teetering on the edge of death.

Slowly, I forced my heavy eyelids open, though only one obeyed. My vision swam in a haze of red and shifting darkness before finally settling. I was lying face down in a pool of my own blood, the jagged pebbles beneath me digging into my skin like a cruel bed.

I glanced at my arms—or what was left of them. One was twisted at an unnatural angle, barely recognizable as my own. The other hung limp, a jagged bone jutting grotesquely from my elbow, piercing through shredded flesh. The sight was nauseating.

Behind me, the roar of cascading water thundered, the pounding force of the waterfall still ringing in my ears. My mind was foggy, struggling to piece together how I'd ended up like this.

Then it hit me. The last thing I remembered was grabbing Miguel and leaping off the waterfall—plunging us both toward what should have been certain death.

The groaning sound came again, weak and wet, gurgling with blood.

Miguel.

He was alive. I couldn't see him, but the noise—those faint, broken whimpers—told me he'd survived. Somehow.

Gritting my teeth—what was left of them—I forced myself to move. My twisted arm, barely functional, trembled as I pressed against the wet ground. Every motion sent waves of agony through me, but I pushed on, lifting my face from the dirt. With a final, desperate heave, I rolled onto my back, gasping as fresh pain tore through my body.

Something warm and wet dangled against my chest—a sickening, jelly-like sensation clinging to my face.

Frowning, I tilted my head, glancing down with my single good eye—and my stomach lurched at the sight.

A set of teeth, fresh and grotesque, was embedded in my belly. It looked like human dentures had been placed there, but only the lower half. Then it hit me—it was my own lower jaw, hanging by a thread of flesh. It dangled from my face, still connected by tendons and flayed skin, blood dripping in slow, steady rivulets down my neck.

I should have been screaming—from the pain, from the horror—but I wasn't even sure I could anymore. My jaw was gone, and my voice with it.

By all rights, I should already be dead. Yet here I was, staring at my mangled arms and jaw, still conscious.

"Help me..." a voice rasped from behind, hoarse and broken.

Tilting my head toward the sound—pain flaring as my hanging jaw snagged on my shredded shirt—I finally saw Miguel.

He wasn't in much better shape.

His face was pale, drenched in blood. A deep gash split his forehead, his skull barely holding together. His waist was twisted sideways in a way no human should endure, and his leg...

His leg hung by nothing but bone.

"I don't... want to die," he whimpered, his fingers twitching weakly in the blood pooling around him.

I didn't respond. I couldn't. His embers of life were fading, flickering out. If he'd just agreed to my plan, we could have avoided this—but now it was too late.