Chapter 8: What Remains
On the tenth day in the Mutable Refuge, Shuun-Vo lost the plate on his chest.
It was the largest of all, a wide, thick plate that covered his entire sternum, protecting the center of his body. When it fell, Shuun-Vo felt as if he had lost an anchor.
The skin beneath was pale like his shoulders, but there was something different. A scar. Not a wound scar, a birthmark, a thin line crossing his chest diagonally.
- "What is this? - Lumea asked, approaching."
- "I don't know - Shuun-Vo said." - "I've never seen it."
He touched the scar with his fingers. The skin was sensitive. The line was straight, precise, as if made by a blade.
- "Maybe it's a memory - Lumea said." - "Something the plates were hiding."
- "I don't have memories. I was born in the Sterile Fields. There was nothing before that."
- "But there's something now."
Shuun-Vo looked at the scar. It didn't hurt. But it pulsed a weak rhythm, almost imperceptible, that he could only feel when he touched the skin.
It was a rhythm he didn't recognize.
- "This isn't mine - he said."
- "It is yours - Lumea replied." - "It always was. You just couldn't feel it."
Shuun-Vo was silent for a long time. Then he did something he had never done before: he removed all the remaining plates.
It wasn't a quick process. Each plate was attached to his skin by thin filaments that snapped with a dry crack. It hurt a little, not the physical pain, but the feeling of stripping away something that had always been part of him.
When the last plate fell, Shuun-Vo looked at his naked body.
It was an ordinary body. Thin. Pale. Marked by scars he had never seen, fine lines on his arms, his legs, his back. None of them hurt. All of them pulsed.
- "I didn't know - he murmured."
- "No one knows - Lumea said." - "Until the plates fall."
Shuun-Vo looked at the plates scattered across the cavern floor. There were dozens of them, of all sizes, glowing faintly in the darkness. They seemed... empty. Like shells abandoned by an animal that had grown too large.
- "What do I do with them? - he asked."
- "Leave them here - Lumea said." - "Or take them with you. The choice is yours."
Shuun-Vo thought for a moment. Then he picked up one of the smaller plates, the first one that had fallen, from his left shoulder, and put it in his pocket.
- "Just one - he said."
- "Why?"
- "To remember."
Lumea nodded. She understood. Some things don't need to be carried forever, but they also don't need to be forgotten.
That night, Shuun-Vo slept without plates for the first time. And he dreamed.
He dreamed of the Sterile Fields of Helyon. Of the wind that carried no dust. Of the silence that didn't crush.
He dreamed of a voice that said: - "You shouldn't have been. But you were. And still... you are here."
When he woke, the scar on his chest was still pulsing. But now, he knew what it was.
It was a heart.