The darkness inside the truck was thick, pressing in from all sides, broken only by the occasional shudder and groan of the vehicle moving over uneven ground.
I could feel the weight of exhaustion pulling at me, but it wasn’t strong enough to silence the thoughts swirling in my mind.
Beth sat across from me, her face barely visible in the dim light, but I could still make out the streaks of dried blood clinging to her skin, the tension in her shoulders, the way she held herself, not defeated, but not unaffected either.
I should’ve let it go.
Should’ve just let the silence stretch between us, let the question stay buried for another time.
But there was nothing else to do.
No distractions.
No fights to focus on.
Just us and the unknown, rattling inside this metal box.
And Beth... Beth might be the only one who had any real answers.
So I asked.
"How are you still alive?"
Beth didn’t react at first.
She just sat there, staring at nothing, like the question hadn’t even registered.
But I knew she heard me.
She was just deciding whether or not to answer.
Then, finally, she exhaled a short laugh, dry, humorless.
"Hell if I know."
I frowned.
"That’s not an answer."
She tilted her head, her usual smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
"Well, it’s the only one I’ve got."
I studied her carefully.
"You should be dead, Beth. Especially because you are still a soldier and not an awakened, who are more powerful than regular humans or even trained ones"
She shrugged.
"Yeah, I know."
Her casual tone irritated me.
Not because I wanted her to be scared, but because it felt like she was dodging something.
Like she knew more than she was letting on.
"Beth," I pressed, leaning forward slightly.
"The orc lord destroyed everything. I blacked out, and when I woke up, I thought..." I swallowed hard, pushing away the memories. "I thought you were gone."
Beth finally met my gaze, and for a moment, I saw something flicker in her eyes.
Something raw.
Something she didn’t want me to see.
I waited, letting the silence stretch between us, giving her the space to say something if she wanted to.
Beth paused.
Just for a second.
It wasn’t hesitation, not exactly.
It was more like she was sifting through the mess in her mind, trying to piece together something that made sense.
But when she finally spoke, her voice carried a weight that made my stomach tighten.
"I don’t really know."
I blinked.
That was it?
Beth, the woman who always had a sharp remark, who never seemed rattled no matter how bad things got, was telling me she didn’t know?
She sighed, shifting slightly against the cold metal wall of the truck.
"All I know is that when the Orc Lord pulled out his final move, my body somehow... cancelled the gravity crush against me."
I stared at her.
"Nullified?"
She nodded, her expression unreadable.
"Yeah. It was like... it just didn’t work on me. I felt it for a second, that crushing force, like the whole world was trying to flatten me into the ground. But then, something inside me... pushed back. And the next thing I knew, it was gone. Like it rejected the very concept of that attack."
Her words hung in the air between us, thick with implication.
That wasn’t normal.
The Orc Lord’s attack had been absolute.
I still remembered the moment it hit, the deafening silence before the world itself seemed to collapse under the weight of an unseen force.
Cities crushed.
Lives snuffed out in an instant.
Even the strongest of us had been powerless.
And yet, Beth, who was strong, but not invincible, had somehow resisted it?
It didn’t add up.
I narrowed my eyes.
"I thought you could only use Ash of Nullification on your weapons."
Beth exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples.
"You are too persistent?" Her voice was sharp, with a hint of frustration.
"I don’t really know what happened, and how I could do that"
"Beth..." I said. "If your body could resist that... what else can it do?"
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead, she looked down at her hands, flexing them experimentally, as if half-expecting something to happen.
As if she didn’t recognize them as her own anymore.
"I don’t know," she murmured. "But I think am going to find out soon."
Beth’s words settled over me like a thick fog, refusing to clear.
I stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying.
Of what it meant.
My mind raced, but no matter which way I turned it, I kept hitting the same impossible truth, Beth had survived something that should’ve crushed her from existence.
She exhaled, leaning back against the cold metal wall of the truck, her fingers idly tracing a dried streak of blood on her arm.
"That’s the only reason I’m still intact," she muttered, almost to herself.
I swallowed.
"What do you mean?"
She glanced at me, then down at her hands.
"Like I said previously, i was injured, sure. But I wasn’t crushed like I should have been. Like you were."
I stiffened.
Like I was.
I lowered my gaze, taking in my own body, the blood-stained suit, they was no faint aches, no broken bones, no injuries, no scar, my flesh was... Normal.
I remembered the moment the Orc Lord’s attack had hit.
The sheer, inescapable force.
I felt myself break.
The pain had been real, undeniable.
But now?
There wasn’t a single crack in my bones, not a single wound to remind me of what had happened.
Only the blood remained, a testament to the fact that I had been crushed to pulp before everything went dark.
But I was still here.
I was still breathing.
By all logic, I shouldn’t be here.
Beth shouldn’t be here.
And yet, here we were.
"We should not be alive" I began slowly.
"No not we... But only me"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well that subject is a complicated one" she said, "While we where being taken away..."
"What happened?" I asked, I was curious to know what happened.
Then, she continued.
"Your body instantly began fixing by itself, I could hear your bones fixing by itself, and your body which was totally crushed and deformed, reformed back to normal."
"... That actually happens anytime I am hurt by any means, I just can’t die"
"Golden girl, that’s some crazy ability you got" Beth said, her usually tone returning back.
Every time I am hurt, I just instantly healed.
Maybe that’s how my ability works...
If that’s how it works, I could literally save the world with it.
But, I don’t think I have reached it fullest potential, yet.
And to do that, I need to become stronger.