Panic was a luxury he could not afford. The terror was a wild, thrashing beast inside his chest, but he knew with cold certainty that if he let it take control, he would die. This procedure, this insane act of self-mutilation he was about to attempt, required more focus and more control than he had ever summoned in his life. He could not act out of fear. He had to act with the detached precision of a master artisan, even as his own body was the flawed material on the workbench.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and began to prepare. It was a ritual, a way to impose order on the chaos that threatened to consume him. First, he dealt with the source. He crawled over to the bloody strip of tunic he'd used as a bandage and carefully unwrapped it. There, stuck to the fabric, was the wicked shard of obsidian that had wounded him. It was a sliver from the Jag-Wolf's hide, and as he held it, he could feel it—a faint, malevolent hum, the lingering echo of the predator's dissonant power. It was the seed of his infection.
In a small, cold act of vengeance that served to focus his mind, he placed the shard on the stone floor. He took a breath, focused his will into a sharp, precise point, and unleashed a tiny, controlled pulse of his own Dissonance. The shard didn't explode; it simply collapsed into a small pile of inert, glittering black powder. The alien hum from the fragment died instantly. One enemy down.
Now for the real enemy, the one already inside his walls.
He shifted his position, gritting his teeth against the throbbing pain in his leg, and sat up, crossing his good leg over the other. He placed his hands, trembling slightly, on his afflicted calf. The skin was cool and hard beneath his fingertips. The task ahead was terrifyingly, almost impossibly complex. He had to fight a war on a microscopic, resonant level, a battlefield he could only perceive with his unique, cursed sense.
He had to do two things at once. First, he had to listen. He closed his eyes and pushed his senses into the cacophony within his own flesh. He had to isolate the specific, alien frequency of the "Jag-Wolf blight" from the softer, warmer, and now frantic frequency of his own life-crystal. It was like trying to pick out a single, grating note from a storm of screaming noise. The blight's song was sharp, aggressive, and cold. His own was a thrumming, panicked vibration, a song of life trying desperately not to be extinguished.
Second, once he had isolated the enemy's frequency, he had to generate his own. He had to create a shattering frequency, tuned perfectly and exclusively to the blight's crystalline structure. He had to become a sonic scalpel, excising the diseased tissue while simultaneously avoiding and shielding his own healthy life-crystal. One mistake, one slip in concentration, and he wouldn't just be cutting out the blight; he would shatter the bone, pulverize the muscle, and turn his entire leg to dust. It was the most complex musical task imaginable, and he had to perform it with the bluntest, most dangerous instrument in existence.
He began.
He took a deep breath, steeling himself. He let out a low, discordant hum, channeling the vibration from his chest, down through his arms, and into his own leg through his hands.
The pain was immediate and biblical.
It was a thousand times worse than the initial wound. It was a feeling of being torn apart from the inside out, on a level he had no words for. The two dissonant frequencies—the blight's and his own—slammed into each other, creating a chaotic, grinding vibration that felt like it was tearing his atoms apart.
He cried out, a raw, strangled sound of pure agony, but he did not stop. He couldn't. He had to ride the wave of pain, to master it.
He started small. He focused on the outermost, finest cracks, the leading edge of the infection. He visualized the corrupted, brittle crystal of the blight turning to harmless, inert dust. He pictured his own healthy cells holding firm, resisting his song, while the alien crystal shattered under the pressure. The pain was a blinding white light in his mind, but through it, he could feel a subtle shift. A tiny area of hardness under his fingertips seemed to soften. The alien frequency in that spot wavered, then died.
It was working.
The knowledge gave him a sliver of strength. This was as much a battle of will as it was of power. The pain was a constant, screaming temptation to stop. The blight's frequency seemed to push back, to fight his influence, trying to find a weakness in his concentration and infect him further. He needed an anchor. He forced his mind to focus, to push past the agony, and he brought up the clearest image he could: Elara's face, her eyes wide with trust, her small hand clutching the promise-stone he had given her.
I will fix this. His own words. His vow.
He used his love for her, his promise, as a shield. He held her image in his mind and pushed on, working his way inward, clearing the smaller veins of corruption one by one. Each victory was paid for with a fresh wave of blinding pain, but with each victory, he reclaimed a tiny piece of his own body. He could feel the coldness receding, replaced by the warm, familiar ache of his own blood flow returning.
Finally, he reached the core. The area around the gash itself. The poison was strongest here, a deep, solid knot of dissonance that resisted him stubbornly. He knew a simple hum wouldn't be enough to break it. He had to overwhelm it completely.
He took one final, ragged breath, the air burning in his raw throat. He placed both hands directly over the gash, ignoring the slickness of his own blood. He summoned every last reserve of his power and screamed it into his own flesh—a silent, internal scream of pure, controlled shattering.
For a terrifying moment, his control slipped. The pain was so immense that his focus wavered, and he felt his destructive power begin to touch the healthy bone and tissue beneath the wound. He felt the deep, resonant thrum of his own tibia begin to vibrate with a dangerous, sympathetic frequency. He was about to shatter his own leg.
Elara.
Her name was a lifeline in the storm. With a final, monumental act of will, he yanked his power back from his bone, narrowed its focus with desperate precision, and slammed it entirely into the alien presence.
He felt a final, violent snap.
And then, it was over. The alien hum vanished. The feeling of being invaded, of being overwritten, was gone. The chaotic, grinding, soul-shredding pain receded, leaving behind only the clean, sharp, and blessedly understandable ache of a deep, physical wound. He had done it. He had cut out the poison. He slumped forward, his head resting on his knees, panting and drenched in sweat, utterly and completely spent. He had won.