A Scum's Redemption

Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Undertow



The memory shatters.

Cold floods in—real, sharp, merciless.

I jolt awake with water in my lungs.

I don't know how long we were under—couldn't have been more than a minute, judging by how close I am to the surface.

There's no sky. No breath. No sound but the crush of current and my own heart hammering behind my ribs.

I'm underwater.

Everything is blue and black and crushing. I thrash once—instinct, not thought—and the pain in my right arm detonates.

I choke.

The river is everywhere. Inside my mouth, up my nose, pressing against my eyes. My limbs are heavy. Sluggish.

But that's not what freezes me.

My hands are empty.

He's gone.

Kai's not in my arms.

I whip around—pain lancing through my shoulder like fire—but I don't care. My good arm claws at the water. My legs kick. My eyes sting as I scan the gloom, frantic, blind.

Where is he?

Where is he where is he where—

There.

Below me.

Sinking like a stone, his small body limp, arms outstretched like he's reaching for something in a dream.

No air bubbles.

No movement.

Just silence.

And the weight of every failure I've ever made dragging me deeper.

I dive.

The cold grabs me like claws, pulling at my coat, my broken arm useless against the current. I bite down a scream and push harder—down, down, down.

The pressure builds. My lungs burn. My vision pulses red at the edges. I reach out with my bad arm—can't grip—shift, twist, grab him with my left.

Got him.

But I'm out of time. I kick—once, twice—but the water holds.

The river fights me every inch of the way, like it wants to keep us both.

My chest is on fire.

The surface is too far.

The pain in my shoulder spikes again and I scream—but the sound doesn't come. Just bubbles. Just blood.

I'm not going to make it.

And for a second—just a second—I almost let go.

But his weight is there, warm and wrong and real against my chest.

And I don't.

I kick again.

Harder.

Light.

My face breaks the surface with a gasp that doesn't even sound human.

Air slams into my lungs like a blade. My throat seizes. I cough, choke, sob between gulps. My whole body trembles. The cold hits again—wind now, not water—but I don't care.

I'm alive.

He's breathing.

And for the first time in what feels like hours—

I am too.

The river spits us out.

We stumble through the shallows—if you can call it that. It's more like a flooded stone basin, water licking at the jagged edge of some cavern floor. My boots slip. My knees hit rock. I barely manage to keep Kai above the surface.

We collapse on the stone.

Cold air claws at my skin. Every breath is a razor. My arm's useless—numb and screaming all at once.

Kai doesn't move.

I roll him onto his side, hand shaking, pressing to his chest like it might still vanish beneath my fingers.

Rising. Falling.

Still breathing.

I drag us away from the water's edge, each movement slower than the last. My soaked coat weighs twice as much now. My body's a mess of bruises and burns and something worse beneath the surface. I can't tell where the pain ends and the panic begins.

Eventually, we stop.

There's nowhere to go.

The cavern yawns around us—vast and starless, the ceiling lost in shadow.

We're on a jagged shelf of rock, maybe thirty feet wide, sloped like a basin carved out by centuries of erosion. Behind us, the river churns into a deep black pool, spiraling slowly, like it's going to swallow anything that enters its maw. 

Ahead?

Nothing but darkness and teeth.

Stalactites hang low from the ceiling—long, thin, and clustered, like the ribcage of some ancient thing that died with its mouth open. The walls are sheer and wet, water veining down them in glistening threads.

No paths.

Even if I wasn't half-drowned and broken—there's nowhere to run.

And if something lives here? 

We'll never hear it coming.

The silence feels wrong.

Not peaceful. Not still.

Like something's watching. 

The kind of quiet that feels aware of you. Like the cave itself is listening, deciding whether to let you stay.

Or bury you.

I sit in it anyway.

Kai's still breathing. Curled in a half-ball on the stone, soaked, shivering slightly, but somehow—still asleep.

Unbelievable.

I stare at him for a moment, water dripping from my hair into my eyes.

"Kid sleeps like a corpse," I mutter. "Lucky bastard."

A faint rise and fall of his chest. Like none of this matters. Like he isn't lying half-dead in a cave beneath the world after getting dragged down a river by a glorified sewer.

I let the silence stretch a while longer. It wraps around everything—soft, muffled. Like the water soaked sound itself. No echoes. No breeze. Just the slow tick of a distant drip. 

Eventually, I push myself up.

Everything hurts. My shoulder's on fire. My legs feel like someone tried to saw through my muscles and stopped halfway.

I limp across the stone shelf, careful with each step. Slippery, uneven, cracked in places where the river once tried to take more than it could hold.

I scan the edge where we came from—no help there. The river exits into a dark pool with a spiral in the middle. Clearly emptying underneath. 

I crouch down near it—stare into the flow.

The water disappears into blackness. No bottom. Just gone.

"Nope," I mutter. "Not dying that way. Too poetic."

I turn back toward the rest of the cavern.

It's all the same. Jagged stone. Wet walls. No path. Just up.

Above, there's a narrow slit in the ceiling. High. Maybe thirty feet. Just wide enough to let in a weak shaft of gray light, cutting across the cavern floor like a spotlight on something already condemned.

Hope, apparently.

"Great," I mutter. "Up we go. Easy."

I step toward the wall, staring up at thirty feet of slick stone and false hope.

I plant my left hand on a jut of rock, gripping hard.

Then I try to lift my right—

Pain lances through my shoulder like lightning.

Yeah.

Not happening.

Maybe doable if the wall wasn't slick as sin. If I had rope. Or two working arms. Or if I didn't have to carry extra weight."

I glance back at Kai.

Still out cold. 

"Better wake up with wings, kid," I say. "Otherwise we're sleeping here forever."

I stand there, trying to catch my breath. Then I check the damage. 

My shoulder's not just bruised.

It's broken.

I can feel the fracture—deep, sharp, like someone jammed a shard of glass into the joint and left it there to simmer. I wince as I peel off my coat, fingers fumbling with the soaked fabric.

The whole arm's starting to swell. Useless.

"Great," I mutter. "One working limb and a cave full of nothing."

I drop to one knee and tug at the seam of my pants with my good hand. The cloth resists, but I get it. Rip a long, damp strip free.

It smells like mud and blood and cold.

I fold it once, twice, loop it under my wrist and around my neck—tighten until the pain nearly makes me puke. But the pressure steadies me.

It's not good.

But it'll hold.

I crawl over to Kai.

I check his ribs. His arms. Neck. Eyes. No bruising on the temple, no weird angles in the limbs.

A few scrapes. A gash on his leg, shallow. He must've hit a rock during the fall.

I tie it off with the cleaner end of the strip I tore. It'll do until he wakes up.

I drag him gently—very gently—toward the far wall, where the light from above hits the stone just right.

Not much warmth, but it's something. And it keeps him in my sight.

I sit.

The sling bites into my neck. My lungs still ache from the river. My eyes burn from more than just the water.

I stare up at that slit in the ceiling. Just enough to see a few stars in the sky.

A way out.

If I were stronger. If I had anything but a half-dead kid, a shattered arm, and a bag full of regrets.

What am I even doing?

I don't know how to take care of a child. I don't know what he needs. I barely know how to keep myself alive.

I was supposed to run. Steal. Hurt. Survive. That was the plan.

Not this.

Not protection.

Not parenting.

I lean back against the wall and shut my eyes for a moment.

I can't help but remember those cellar walls—cold, silent, absolute.

Back then, no one even knew I was missing.

But now?

No one knows where I am.

Not even me.

I don't know why I'm still holding on.

Maybe because he is.

The weight presses down.

But it's different now.

Not crushing. Just... there.

Because somewhere under all the pain and cold and fear, something still burns.

Resolve.

She said we weren't made to crawl.

And I'm not.

Even if I have to drag myself out of this place with my teeth, I will.

Then—

A sound.

Faint.

Far.

But not far enough.

A howl—drawn out, ragged, and wrong.

Not wolves. Not natural.

It echoes down through the slit above us like something trying to remember what it means to hunt.

It doesn't rise and fall like it should.

It cracks—midway, splinters into something higher. Sharper. Like bone being pulled through a throat that forgot how to scream.

I freeze.

My breath catches.

The silence that follows feels worse than the sound itself.

Because now I know—something's out there.

And it's getting closer.


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