He woke drowning—water wasn't rushing in, it had settled in.
There was no soft panic, no slow realization—it happened all at once, then none at all.
Xavier was trapped somewhere between reality and a strange sort of detached awareness.
He gagged on instinct—water filled his mouth and nose in a brutal rush, slammed down his throat until his lungs spasmed in protest.
More gagging. More rushing. More suffocation.
A vicious cycle.
His body jerked awake before his mind did—not fully anyway, reflex clawing for air that did not exist.
Cold wrapped him completely, a crushing, soundless weight pressing from every direction at once.
Arms and legs shrouded in numbness that even movement could not allay, which was fine since he could imagine the pain that would come with full nervous-system awareness.
Then—a light came.
The light—the same light.
A light, defined by his grandfather, as something we should never have touched—now, we have to suffer for it.
It flared from him—through him—golden and wrong, searing without warmth.
Xavier had felt it once as a child—wrong, disgusting. Not meant for him. For a human. And now, he was experiencing the very same sensation. Almost as if a warning sung in a language he could never understand.
For a heartbeat, the river around his body glittered as if someone had spilled molten gold into the depths.
It did not heal him.
If anything, it made him aware. His shoulder screamed as if the joint were being pried apart from the inside.
Torn flesh along his ribs burned sharply, edges flaring like fresh wounds.
His jaw throbbed with a deep, nauseating ache—cracked teeth grinding uselessly against one another, his mouth half-numb, half on fire.
The light faded as quickly as it came.
Pain remained.
Xavier convulsed, choking, body finally understanding the problem. His limbs moved without permission—automatic, animal—arms sweeping, legs kicking with clumsy desperation.
His nerves misfired wildly, muscles twitching out of sync from venom and exhaustion and blood loss layered too thick to separate.
He didn't think swim.
He didn't think at all.
He moved.
And his wounds did not delay him—almost as if they had lost efficacy for a moment.
Water pressure crushed his ears, a deep, stabbing pain that made stars burst behind his eyes.
Something wet and warm streamed from them, lost instantly to the current. His lungs burned, vision narrowing, black creeping in from the edges as his body screamed for oxygen.
Up. He needed up.
He followed bubbles he didn't remember exhaling. His shoulder slipped partway out of its socket with the motion, white agony lancing down his arm.
He screamed underwater—felt it vibrate uselessly through his chest—and kept going anyway.
Time fractured.
One moment, he was twenty-meters deep—the next, he was a mere meter.
He broke the surface in a violent explosion of motion, sucking air so hard it tore at his throat.
He gagged immediately, coughing river water back up in harsh, wet bursts that shook his entire frame. His jaw refused to cooperate; the sound came out wrong, broken and animal.
Blood mingled with animalistic froth on his lips.
For one fragile second, joy flickered.
He was alive.
The thought didn't bloom—it flashed and vanished, replaced by the dull imperative to keep breathing.
He floated poorly, limbs heavy, one arm dragging uselessly as his shoulder threatened to give out entirely. His body felt wrong—too heavy, too slow, like he was wearing himself incorrectly.
It took five minutes to make it ten meters against the current.
He could hear the rush of the waterfall distantly behind him but there was no presence of mind, nor energy, to inspect anything unnecessary to his immediate survival.
There was only swim and forward.
Then the water beneath him moved—at first, he thought it was him.
But—not the current.
Definitely not debris.
Something large shifted below the surface, a darker shape gliding just out of focus.
Xavier's heart stuttered.
He tried to kick away, but his leg cramped violently, muscle seizing hard enough to wrench a hoarse sound from his throat.
The shape surged upward.
Teeth flashed beneath the surface—too many, too close.
A deep-water predator drawn by blood and light and weakness—luckily, it was a fish. A large one, but strangely innocent looking.
Not that that made much of a difference, but it was a strange sort of comfort to see a wild boar instead of a poisonous snake, even if both could kill you equally fast.
Xavier didn't scream this time. There was no air to waste.
His hand struck stone—blind luck and chaotic movements had brought him halfway to shore—and closed around it.
He swung as the creature lunged, movement sloppy and uncoordinated but fueled by pure refusal.
The rock connected with something solid.
Once. Twice.
A dull, reverberating impact that jarred his arm all the way to the shoulder.
His swinging did as much damage to his hand as it did to the offending animal.
The large fish thrashed, water erupting around them.
Something sharp grazed his side, tearing fabric and skin.
Pain registered distantly, like a message arriving too late to matter.
He struck again.
The creature recoiled, vanished into the depths with a violent flick of its tail, leaving only turbulence and the coppery bloom of fresh blood behind.
Xavier didn't watch it go.
He dragged himself toward the shore, every movement a negotiation between agony and collapse.
His fingers dug into mud and slick stone, nails splitting, palms screaming. He hauled his useless arm along with the rest of him, shoulder slipping fully out of place this time with a sickening shift that made his vision white out entirely.
He crawled.
Water sloughed off his body in sheets as he collapsed onto the bank, chest heaving, lungs burning like they'd been scrubbed with acid.
He retched again—dry this time—spit and blood stringing from his mouth. His jaw trembled uncontrollably, teeth clicking softly against one another.
He would have to remove some of them, slip his shoulder back into place, suture his split cheeks and the countless lacerations, deep and otherwise, loitering his ribs and chest area.
The last of his injuries, concussions and bleeding wounds on his forehead and in his hair, required some simple bandaging—not much else he could do about those.
Xavier could only hope, his current dizziness, detachment, and general muddle state was just that—a state, not permanent.
He lay there for a long time.
Joy settled in him strangely—not relief, not triumph.
Just a quiet, stubborn warmth beneath the pain.
His body kept moving when it shouldn't have. His hands clenched and unclenched automatically, testing sensation.
His legs twitched.
His breath steadied by increments so small they were almost imaginary.
He stared at the sky without really seeing it.
Survival had stripped him of ceremony.
There was no prayer, no thanks.
Just motion. Just the next breath, and then the next.
When he finally pushed himself upright, it wasn't decision—it was habit.
And he moved, wounded and shaking and alive, because something in him still refused to stop.
He didn't stop at the shoreline—he couldn't. His mind could only process one instruction at a time, and right now, his instructions were limited to climb and forward.
The river gave way to slick stones.
Then came the mud which seemed to want to drown his knees.
He crawled anyway—dragged himself forward in inches that felt like miles, past tangled reeds that sliced at his skin, over roots slick with moss that refused to hold his weight.
Every change in environment was registered as a distant ache.
Once, he slid backward down a shallow embankment and had to claw his way up again, sobbing soundlessly through broken teeth, jaw trembling with the effort.
If there was a sorrier sight in the ruthless jungle, Xavier was interested in seeing it—even if just to lessen the blow to his pride.
Animals, at least, had the dignity to die.
He did not have such limits—or perhaps he did, and refused to acknowledge them so completely, so utterly, that giving up now was an affront to the universe itself.
It was as simple as choosing a hill—and dying on that hill.
The world narrowed to texture and resistance: wet leaves plastered to his chest, grit grinding into his palms, the dull thud of his useless arm bumping along beside him.
It was funny in a way—because there was no humor to find in the moment.
He crawled for nearly a mile inland, though he would never know it.
Distance meant nothing anymore.
Only away mattered—away from water, away from open sky, away from anything that could finish what the mountain had started.
The thick scent of wet fur followed him for a time, and more than once, something slithered over his legs, but again and again, a bit of crawling—as if by magic—solved all problems.
The bushes thickened.
Thorns snagged his clothes and tore free strips of fabric and skin alike.
He welcomed the pain; it meant he was still here to feel it. His vision swam, tunneled, but he forced himself forward until something dark and solid loomed through the blur.
As if his mind had been given a signal of safety, his thoughts suddenly expanded to encompass more than away. His vocabulary now included something along the lines of safety, but more accurately 'not dying today'.
A hollow tree.
He stopped there, forehead pressed to the bark, breathing in the scent of rot and damp earth. Luckily, it was one of the few trees his limited knowledge could identify—mahogany, or perhaps, he has subconsciously made his way toward something vaguely familiar.
With his good arm, he punched the trunk—once, twice—each blow dull and weak but deliberate.
The sound came back hollow.
Empty. Safe enough.
If there was anything inside, stalking, waiting, then Xavier figured he wouldn't have much of a chance to begin with—surely the universe didn't want to kill him so badly.
In his books, surviving three impossible events back-to-back had to count for some sort of divine pass—even if just for a couple of days.
He laughed, or tried to.
It came out as a wet, broken noise.
Getting inside was an ordeal.
He scraped away debris with trembling fingers, dug at the soft, decaying wood until his nails split further, then dragged himself forward inch by inch.
His shoulder screamed as he twisted, but he bit down on the pain, teeth grinding uselessly.
He wedged himself into the hollow, bark biting into his ribs, and then—somehow—pushed again, finding a second cavity where the tree opened upward.
It embraced him—snug and comfortable.
It brought him some strange mental reassurance that anything looking to kill him, would have to drag him out by the ankles—enough time to fight back.
He curled there, folded into himself, the world reduced to darkness and breath and heartbeat.
For the first time since the fall, nothing was chasing him.
The tree held.
And Xavier, broken and shaking and alive, finally let himself stop moving—sleep came seconds later, and for the first time in forever, he dreamed of teenage things.