Chapter 57: Interest on Sacrifice
MGS MONTH STARTED..... SO RECALLING PREVIOUS Chapter ALONG IN THIS.....
Nishanth’s return to consciousness wasn’t gentle. It was a sledgehammer blow of sensation. The sterile, ozone-tang of the med-bay air scraped his raw throat. Every breath was a laborious heave, met by a jagged protest from his left side where three ribs screamed their betrayal.
The memory of godhood – the effortless power, the absence of need – was a phantom limb, agonizing in its absence. He remembered the crushing weight of Mammon’s final blow, the sickening crackle as divine energy extinguished within him, leaving only this fragile, aching meat-sack.
He groaned, pushing himself up on trembling elbows, the rough med-cot fabric scratching his skin – another new, unwelcome intimacy.
Across the dimly lit room, illuminated by the flickering emergency strip lights reflecting off shattered glass and spilled medical supplies, Zara sat hunched. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was locked onto her right hand, held out before her like a cursed artifact.
The skin was a ruin. Where once smooth flesh had been, a latticework of void-black veins pulsed with an unnatural light beneath a network of thin, silvery scars – the legacy of Mammon’s paperclip tendrils. The scars weren’t healed; they looked welded shut, alien. Her knuckles were white with tension, a tremor running through the corrupted limb.
"You look like shit," she rasped, her voice sandpaper-rough, devoid of its usual sharp edge. It was a statement of fact, devoid of malice, carrying the weight of shared ruin.
Nishanth managed a wet, painful cough. Copper bloomed on his tongue. "Feel worse," he gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a rusty smear. A cold, hard dread settled in his gut. "Where’s my coin?" His voice was barely a whisper, tight with desperation. That coin was the last ember, the final anchor to what he was.
A small, dull object clinked onto the cot beside him. Lilith stood near the shattered viewport, her usually vibrant green eyes shadowed, her posture rigid with exhaustion and simmering anger.
She gestured dismissively at the coin. "Mammon’s last laugh. You’re mortal, boss. And broke. Utterly, cosmically broke." The finality in her voice was a physical blow.
Nishanth picked up the coin. It was cold, unnaturally heavy for its size, the copper dulled to near-black. The faint, comforting hum of residual divinity he’d felt earlier was gone. Extinguished. It was just metal now. Dead weight.