Finding Contentus

Chapter 114: Regain

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"What you are feeling is all—"

Real weakness.

"The question you want to ask yourself is exactly—"

How much real weakness?

The answer was unquantifiable. Never, in all her life, did she ever feel so weak. It was worse than death, at least there she could die strongly and not live weakly.

It was cruel torture. It was like living and dying. Her body didn't have a breathing pulse, and her brain was frozen, but her spirit was still alive in some sealed chasm between life and death. How the fuck did that work? How did she survive again? How did she keep surviving miraculously?

"You're weak." Kaikara rightfully called her.

I lost. She recollected her loss with terror. I died. She recollected her death with fear for Gabrielle's life and the string she had snapped.

I'm... breathing? She wasn't sure how to collect that truth. The pain of weakness murdered her mind like a hailstorm of blades that went to war with her penetrated fortress of a brain.

When she tried to open her eyes, she found that her eyelids were frozen shut. When she tried to open her mouth to scream, she found that her lips were also frozen shut. When she tried to move, she found that her body was frozen stiff.

The anguish of being unable to move an inch while being aware of herself was excruciating, maddening. Her limbs were like lead, her nerves were like steel and her bones were like... ice. Bones?

I have bones. Her bones had regrown from their broken state like a new slate, like a recreated skeleton. She had a frame, an actual frame that structured her skin.

She still couldn't move. She heard flat voices, going in and out. She couldn't open her eyelids fully, but she was able to peer through them thinly.

I see death. I see it everywhere. It's inside me. Kakara saw her raven and wolf spirit. Yvonne hit the nail on the fucking iceberg. Kakara saw death in her soul like frozen waterfalls, mountains, cliffs and lakes.

Why am I not dead? She thought over her worst night ever when she wished she was dead more than anything. Living was hell and death was heaven to her. Until, the heavenly presence of her mother came to remind her that surviving hell was worth it if one wanted to find contentment through their own determination.

In many ways, she did find contentment in Petora with Renero, Genesia, Neosa, her mother, and even Ishthrylla and the rest. She reached it again when she and Genesia saved each other on Mad Scar, time and time again, and she reached it once more with her husband, her star mate, Gabrielle, back in the wintery hell she was born in.

Kakara dove into the frozen water, scrambling for more memories to ignite the spark she needed to move.

I'll never see Gabrielle again. I'll never see Mama again. I'll never see Gëne and Nëo again. I'll never see Papa Ren again. I'll never see Ishthrylla again. I'll never see—

She went on to list the things she wouldn't be able to see in the world of living if she continued to stay in the world of the dead that consumed her.

Non. That's not right. Death doesn't consume me because... I consume others with death.

It was so simple to say. I am ice. I am winter. I... I am death.

Kakara heard a thunderous voice agreeing like summer and spring that shone with life. "Arise, Reine Kakara. Queen of Death."