The young man sat in silence, eyes locked onto the freshly dug grave. He had looted the robed man after a few minutes of rest, then proceeded to bury him. The three not quite human women remained kneeling near him, though no longer bowing after he told them to knock that shit off. It had not really sunk in, at least until he had finished burying the guy. Now, staring at the grave, his life passed through his mind—all of it. He had thought he was done with feeling it, thought he had moved on after his reforging. Thought it was clear in his head and ready to be processed, something he had never truly done. Instead, he had been splintered and used as a tool of fate or something else.

Everything since his waking up here had been mild; he had just accepted what had happened for the most part. Shrugged his shoulders and moved on. The Bird thing, the new world, whatever the hell cultivation was—all of it—just accepted. Until it wasn't.

Shock, he realized, he had been in some sort of shock. His mind numb and failing to register the sheer weight of all that has happened. Staring at the grave, tears fell from his face as his mind tried to process exactly what had been done to him. Emotions that had been faint memories or echoes of what that should have been, now sprang forth unbidden in all their terrible glory. So once again, his life and life's events played out before him. His perfect memory acting as a script for the stage of memory playing out in his head. This time, however, he felt all the emotions he had before. Witnessed the whole unadorned truth of himself—the good and the bad, the great and small. It was both wonderful and terrible at the same time. He felt the joy of his two women, the love and care of and for his family. The loss of them and himself when they were taken from him.

He witnessed his splintered selves, moving like disjointed puppets, and the horrible things two had done to those perceived to be the reason. “No,” he shook his head, not TWO, he had done it. Two was part of himself now, as well as the old man, and the part that just gave up. Still, part of himself was from before the fracture, a part that had been whole. So, he sat for hours, staring at a grave, remembering and feeling everything in his past, from each perspective. Crying silent tears for who he had been and what he had lost, as well as for who he had become and who he would need to be.

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He was jagged-edged but whole. The heavens, it seems, were stingy. They, or it, or whatever had put him back together but done a crappy job. They, or it, could have fixed him perfectly, could have made him hale and whole, ready to do what needed to be done. Or it could have washed him clean, poured his shattered soul back together, purified it, and sent it on—whether to become someone else or to go wherever souls go. That didn’t happen; instead, he got pounded in the forge of lightning and whatever else came with it. He was not sure what it was, but there was something else inside that lightning. Power of some sort he never even thought could be real. Heated over and over, pounded together and folded, until he was like a billet of layered Damascus. Except, one made by an inept child or idiot savant. There was little, if any, actual shaping. No effort to hammer the edges straight and flat. Just a roughly bar-shaped block of metal, masterfully forge-welded together but with no thought to clean up its edges. Or, in his case, a roughly soul-shaped soul, complete with jagged little planes and spurs coming off at odd angles. “What a crock…” he mumbled to himself.

So, with a heavy sigh, still looking at the grave and seeing the many graves from his past, he shuddered, wiped his eyes, and became still. Watching as all graves seemed to burn in the fires of his rebirth. He would see more, he knew. For with his returned emotions, he realized what the bird was trying to tell him. What he didn’t have the capacity to understand. He also knew now one of the problems he had with the cultivation thing. He couldn’t cultivate or understand what was being implied by the feathered menace. Because he had not been fully restored. He wasn’t quite there yet, but he would be soon. He finally had the capacity to truly cope with his past and let the healing truly begin.

Who knew, perhaps all the jagged little pieces of his soul would one day be smooth and seamless, as the weight of time and life ground him down and forged him into something else. Something new… He snorted at the thought, then laughed. “Who am I kidding, it's more likely to be a rock tumbler, smashed against other rocks, grit, and sand.” With one last chuckle, he finally turned to the not quite human women and spoke.

“Why do you keep calling me Master, and thanks to whichever one of you bandaged my arm?"