Chapter eleven: Freedom with a price

William woke up, and immediately, he knew something was wrong. His body felt different—wrong in a way he couldn't quite place. His chest rose and fell, but he felt no warmth, no comforting pulse of heat in his limbs. Cold. He was cold. Not the kind that made him shiver, but a deeper absence of warmth, like something vital had been stripped away.

Slowly, he sat up. The cave was the same—dark, damp, and heavy with silence—but he wasn't. His movements felt smooth, effortless, yet disturbingly weightless. He pressed a hand against his chest, expecting to feel the familiar thrum of his heartbeat.

Nothing.

His breath hitched.

He was dead

[Usually, when you die, you forget everything.]

William's hands clenched. The core. He had consumed the Wendigo's core. He had been dying, starving, breaking apart from the inside out. He had thought it would save him—or at least give him an escape.

And it had. Just… not in the way he expected.

[The core has reconstructed your body.]

A pause. He could feel the weight of the words before they came.

[But if you die again… your flaw will take hold.]

The flaw. The one thing he could never recover from. He didn't need an explanation. He understood. This was his one and only revival.

No more second chances. No more coming back. If he died again he would forget everything in his memory, every piece of himself that had survived until now—gone.

He would wake up empty, a hollow shell without purpose, without identity. A life erased.

The thought sent a chill through him, deeper than the unnatural cold in his veins. He had already lost so much. His past. His future. But this—this was different. This was an end beyond death, a fate worse than the hunger that had nearly consumed him.

His hands trembled, but not from fear. From certainty. He could not die again.

No matter what it took, no matter how much he had to endure—he had to survive.

The voice in his head was still there, steady and cold.

 [You have options.]

[You could revive them, you know?]

[They can serve your every whim every desire]

William shook his head "Why would I want a dead person following me around? I'd feel creeped out" he spoke to the silence "However the wendigo… that could be quite helpful."

[What are you waiting for?]

William walked over, he had knowledge. Knowledge he didn't know he had. It felt like he always knew how to use his new powers yet he hasn't had powers for a complete day cycle.

Turning a corpse into a thrall is a simple affair that he could break into simple steps.

Kill or find dead target.

Empty subject of any blood.

Remove soul core (Do not eat a soul core very harmful after your own core forms).

Stitch body together if limbs are apart holes are fine your magic will patch it up.

Reconstruction: Fill it with your magic focus on the mind eventually a connection will form when it reaches a sufficient level.

He barely needed to think about it. His magic pulsed—an unfamiliar, hungry thing—and the torn muscle and shattered ribs shifted, knitting themselves back together.

The Wendigo's empty sockets began to glow.

A long, rattling breath escaped its throat as it stirred. Its limbs tensed, claws flexing, but it did not move against him. It was waiting. Watching. Bound.

William exhaled. The power in his veins, the cold certainty of his survival, settled into place.

"Get up," he ordered.

The Wendigo obeyed.

"Now break the rocks"

It moved over with the grace of a ballerina. It felt like he was guiding it exactly where it needed to go. His simple thoughts made it move. That brings the questions of what happens in a fight? Does he have to command it to do every single movement in the battlefield? 

When the thing reached the boulders that blocked the exit it's inhuman strength broke the rocks like it was a pencil in the hands of an angry student.The dust moved around Williams figure he had to hold his breath to avoid it. After thirty seconds he realised something he wasn't remotely feeling the instinctual need to breathe in? After a minute he still didn't need to breath but he decided to break his streak it was weird to not breath it felt like something was missing in his body.

Deciding that it was time to leave he walked out of the cave.