CHAPTER 44: CHAPTER 44; TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL

Kailani felt Shuyin’s consciousness slip away entirely, like sand through fingers, dissolving into whatever lay beyond death.

Her presence was gone, leaving only her memories behind.

Kailani was alone in this borrowed body, and she needed to navigate these new surroundings.

The entire exchange had taken perhaps three seconds in real time, and she only looked dazed.

"Princess!" Tank’s voice cut through the haze. "Princess, can you hear us? What’s happening to you?!"

Kailani, no. Shuyin now —she had to remember she was Shuyin. She lowered her hands from her head and looked up at the three women gawking at her. She could see their fear, their confusion, their concern all warring on their faces.

Through the borrowed memories, she understood them in a way that went beyond mere observation with her eyes.

Tank, who had killed her abusive husband and protected other inmates with the same fierce loyalty.

Blade, who had been a nurse before a mercy killing gone wrong. Razor, the youngest of them all, barely twenty, was in here for stabbing her stepfather when he came at her mother with a bottle.

Good people trapped in bad circumstances. Not so different from her own people, really. Not so different from herself.

She had to earn their trust and assume the same behaviour as the original owner of the body. Had to convince them she was still the Shuyin they knew, even as she wore these impossible eyes.

"I..." she nervously muttered, and was startled by the sound of her own voice. Human vocal cords, were so different from her true form and vocal cords. She made herself sound weak, confused, and frightened.

Was this how they talked? She inwardly wondered...

"What... what happened? Why are you all looking at me like that? Did something happen?"

"Your eyes," Blade said carefully, still pressed against the wall, clearly trying to decide if she should be terrified or amazed by these sudden changes. "Princess, your eyes, they have changed. One of them is... It’s glowing. It’s not... It’s not that kind of human."

"What?" Shuyin touched her face with trembling fingers, playing the part of confusion and innocence, "What do you mean? What’s wrong with my eyes?"

"They’re fucking reptile eyes!" Razor blurted out, pointing towards her eyes with still fear lingering in her eyes. "Like a snake or a lizard or something! All glowing and creepy! I don’t know how to explain it... Those aren’t human eyes..."

They were more than worried and wondering what could have happened to her... Her body had gone cold but now, she was alive?

Shuyin forced herself to look shocked, and scared. "That’s impossible. I don’t.... I don’t understand what you guys are saying. I was... I was dying. I remember dying. And then there was this... this pulling sensation, and pain, and...."

She cut herself off, looking around the cell with wide eyes, one brown with swelling, and the other one jade and glowing. "How am I alive? I wasn’t breathing, as I felt I was suffocating. I thought my heart had stopped. I felt it stop."

"We know!" Tank responded, her voice still rough with shock and disbelief because she was the one holding her body and it was already turning cold. "You were dead! You were really dead! I held your body! There was no pulse, no breathing, nothing!"

"And now you’re alive," Blade added, her medical training warring with what her eyes were telling her. "And healing. Damn it! Look at your hand."

Everyone looked at her hands...

Shuyin followed her gaze to the hand that had been shattered just days ago. The fingers were still swollen and bruised, but the unnatural angles were correcting themselves. She could flex them now without the screaming agony that should have accompanied such an injury.

"What’s happening to you?" Blazer was also shocked, and moved backwards a little, her eyes were now glowing electric jade green....

Looking at her body, which was recovering at such a high speed, they got even more frightened. Shuyin didn’t know what to say as an excuse...

"It probably could be the jade hairpin, doing all this since it’s an antique.." Shuyin suddenly thought of this excuse, as she didn’t know how to explain this entire bizarre occurrence.

She made her voice urgent, and confused. "My mother’s hairpin. It could be her soul protecting me... That’s it..." She couldn’t say otherwise. She has successfully escaped those humans, she wasn’t going to fall into another batch of humans, who knows!

Tank’s eyes widened with understanding. "Protective jade. Shit. My grandmother used to talk about that. Old magic. Real old magic."

"My mom had a jade bracelet she swore saved her life once," Razor added, leaning forward now, fear giving way to fascination. "Said she should have died in a car accident, but the bracelet shattered instead, and she walked away without a scratch."

Shuyin continued, touching her chest where her heart beat steadily now, impossibly alive. "Maybe it released something? Some kind of protection that had been dormant? And when I died, it... activated?"

"That’s insane," Blade said, but her voice lacked conviction, "That’s not how anything works. That’s superstition."

"You got a better explanation for reptile eyes and coming back from the dead?" Tank challenged. "I saw enough weird shit in my village growing up. Sometimes the old stories are true."

Kailani looked at the body that was healing, knowing she was already dead... And now, she had taken someone else’s body, but so long as she was alive, nothing else mattered.

"Apart from the eyes and body changes, I don’t think anything else has changed. Right Tank?" She softly hummed, gazing at the frightened, big-bodied girls.

"That’s true, I didn’t know what to do, luckily, you have just survived...." Tank was glad that she was alive more than anything.

"Hehehe... Yeah...." Lin Shuyin giggled settling down on the concrete as her body tremendously healed itself.

She could feel the body changing, now, she had a normal human body to move around with. They all went silent, amazed and trying to calm down.

The silence in the isolation cell was heavy, broken only by the sound of their breathing and the distant mechanical hum of the prison’s ventilation system.

Tank, Blade, and Razor watched in a stunned fascination as Shuyin’s body continued its impossible healing. The swelling around her eye was receding visibly, the bruises fading from deep purple to yellow-green and then disappearing entirely.

Her broken ribs realigned with soft clicks that made Blade wince despite her medical training. The gashes on her arms sealed themselves, leaving behind only faint pink lines that grew fainter by the second.

"This is insane," Blade whispered, unable to look away. "I’ve never seen anything like this. Even with the best medical care, these injuries would take weeks to heal. You’re doing it in minutes."

Shuyin flexed her fingers experimentally, marveling at the lack of pain. This human body was so much frailer than her true form had been, yet somehow her essence, her power, had transferred with her consciousness. The ancient magic of her people flowed through these land-dwelling veins, adapting, changing, making this vessel something more than human.

"How do you feel?" Tank asked cautiously, still keeping a careful distance.

"Feeling better...." She was truly feeling better, and after so many years of torture, she was finally free of pain and she could live once again.

Shuyin remained still for a moment, letting the healing process complete itself. She could feel it now, the power thrumming beneath her skin, foreign yet familiar, her essence adapting to this terrestrial form. But how much had transferred? What could she do in this fragile human shell?

She needed to know. She needed to test.

"I need to rest," she said softly, turning away from the three women and curling into herself against the far wall. "Please, just... give me a moment."

Tank exchanged glances with Blade and Razor, but they nodded, settling back into their corners. The strange events had exhausted them all. Razor’s eyes kept drifting closed despite her best efforts to stay alert.

Shuyin waited until their attention wandered, until Tank was staring at the ceiling and Blade was examining her own fingernails. Then, hidden by the shadows and her position, she held out her newly healed hand palm up.

Come, she thought, reaching for the power that had once let her command entire currents, that had let her sister sing ships to their doom.