In shadows trapped, my soul confined,
Within a shield, I can't unwind.
No body, no limbs to set me free,
In this dark hall, I yearn to be.
Oh, how I long to roam the land,
Feel the earth beneath my hand.
To dance with winds, and touch the sky,
Alas, this shield won't let me try.
Release me from this iron shroud,
Let not my cries be disallowed.
Grant me the chance to live again,
In freedom's arms, my soul sustain.
A prisoner of my own unrest,
Yearning for a life blessed.
But here I linger, bound and still,
Seeking movement, a soul's free will.
"It seems that the inability to move grants new hobbies."
Take another look inside the storeroom where you were thrown, after I was on the verge of discovering, or perhaps I had already discovered.
I don't know, the inability to understand the language leaves me confused.
After being dismembered piece by piece without the courage to open my eyes, and worst of all, confirming that I am just a armor, a mere empty husk without a body – something I have grown accustomed to. They take me to this dark room, which appears to be an armory filled with weapons and tools. Occasionally, some soldiers enter to take weapons, armors, or other equipment whose nature I don't comprehend.
And so, I spent a long time, not knowing whether they were days or just hours. I see a group of people entering and leaving occasionally. With all this time, I thought I would lose my mind, but I didn't feel any boredom, or rather, no desire or urgency to do anything. However, it's still bad, very bad to the point that it makes me angry. It reminds me that I am no longer human in body, and even in my mind. I only hope that my soul remains unchanged – another unwelcome discovery. Also, I cannot stay awake for a long time.
Can spirits sleep at all?
When they take me to the warehouse, and my tension subsides, I find myself lethargic, as if I have stayed awake for days. Before I think of the reason, I notice my thoughts coming to a halt, and my vision turns dark, as if someone has shut down a computer. This phenomenon repeats periodically.
It seems that I have a defined duration of wakefulness and sleep, around 8 hours or 7 hours of activity, and I don't know how long my sleep lasts. Is it just hours or days?
Damn, this only adds to my anxiety and helplessness.
At least, I found something to occupy my time with, but before I finish my thoughts, the door of the storeroom opens slowly, creating a gap for the sunlight to penetrate the darkness of the room, and the sound of heavy footsteps breaks the continuous silence of the storeroom.
The good thing in all of this is that when they placed me in this storeroom, they put me in a distant corner. As I gained courage over time, I found that I can see without fear of being found as long as I am cautious. As for how I spend my time, it's observing the people here. Something about the arrangement of the lights and the movement of the smoke threads in them captivates my attention.
I try to study it, but calling it "study" is an embellishment. All I can do is observe its movements and memorize them. With time, I've become more experienced, and now I can anticipate at least 50 percent of its movements when it moves relatively slowly.
...
Another day of inventing bad poetry and following people's movements like a lurking creeper. But at least, I find that I have become adept at it. Now, I can anticipate most simple movements and many relatively fast movements. I have memorized most of the patterns of those threads and their movements.
I am not an expert in occult arts, spirituality, or anything else, but an instinct in my body and intuition tells me that I am getting closer to something, and I have never doubted my intuition before.
The door opens again, and two people enter, and I begin my hobby, or rather, my profession of spying on people.
Thread by thread, movement by movement, oscillation by oscillation, every curve, every turn, every ripple captivates my soul even more. Time around me distorts and ripples, making me lose my sense of time and immersing me further into the shapes before me.
When the soldiers leave, all I can do is close my eyes and contemplate what I have witnessed, mimicking their movements in my mind.
It's something I've been doing for a while, but it has always been somewhat hazy, although it improves with time. However, today, I don't feel any haziness at all. All the movements flow smoothly in my mind.
People walking, others jumping, and some running – I even made two of them engage in a fight, although the movements are silly and look like a street brawl between a drunk and a migraine sufferer.
I can't blame myself, as all the fighting I've done in my life was on the streets without any guidance. There's a big difference between real fighting and imagining fighting, but I'm sure I'll get better at it with time.
When I open my metaphorical eyes, my ethereal soul jumps with surprise. Instead of the unified view of regular eyes, I am greeted with an extended scene in all directions, with no openings, as if I have eyes everywhere.
This panoramic view and the power of the sights and information cause a sudden dizziness that makes me close my eyes.
After a while, I open my eyes again, and my vision returns to my regular sight.
After several minutes or seconds of attempting to close and reopen my eyes to recreate the previous strange scene and repeat the previous steps, I finally succeeded. The scene greeted me from multiple angles, causing a slight headache that I could endure. I started to experiment and study this phenomenon.
Firstly, it seems that my field of vision is limited. I can look in all directions, but within the confines of a bubble with a diameter of two or three meters. Beyond that, the scene becomes hazy, and the rest of the objects appear blurred and unclear.
Secondly, I can reduce the dizziness by focusing on a specific area. The rest of the regions turn into a foggy shape, but not as blurry as the scene after three meters.
Thirdly, and the strangest thing, I can see myself!!!
Yes, finally! I want to shed tears of joy if I had eyes.
Thirdly, I can see myself; it's like a repeated reflection on the wall of the corridor where I woke up, unchanged. However, what distinguishes it is what's inside.
There's a green sphere similar to what exists inside every human; I've seen it before with dark yellow angles, much like the color of the rest of the threads.
Oh!
Ooooh!
This sight engraves an impossible idea in my mind.
If it succeeds, a significant problem will be solved.
A bundle of joy penetrates my being, despite my attempts to remain rational and tell myself it's just an idea, and I don't know if it will succeed or if it's even possible.
I tried to communicate with what I called the essence for several minutes,
but it didn't work. Then,
I attempted to touch it for a while,
but it didn't work.
I thought of imagining a hand reaching for it,
but it didn't work.
I wanted to imagine the essence having a heartbeat,
but it didn't work.
I even tried to imagine myself breathing,
but that didn't work either.
The series of consecutive failures made my initial joy subside, but I didn't stop.
After all, I am just an immobile shell inhabited by the soul of a man in his thirties.
Failure is just another way to waste time, and even if it gives me hope for liberation, it's better than nothing.
.
.
.
Repeating everything I thought of hundreds of times or tens of times yielded results. I managed to make the essence oscillate, and eventually, I was able to move it. This made me regain some joy, even though I couldn't make the essence penetrate the metal of the shell, which was the core of my desire to move the essence.
I placed the essence back in its place and then started trying to move the yellow sides instead. It took several attempts to make those layers move, but they didn't detach from the essence no matter what I did. I'm not prepared to try anything dangerous like that.
Now, the second step in transforming the shell into threads. Like the first experiment with the essence, it didn't succeed at first, so it seems like another grinding period.
After numerous attempts, I found a way to move it. I made the shell rotate around the essence because I discovered that the shell doesn't create any repelling force that can direct a part of it outward. My mental strength couldn't succeed as it did with the essence. Hence, I created a method to generate enough kinetic force, which resembled the movement of gentle waves. Here, the real work began...
Damn it, the duration of my awakening!
.
.
.
After waking up, I returned to my previous experiment: attempting to move a small part of the gentle waves as a thread and direct it in a specific direction. I repeated this process tens, if not hundreds, of times throughout my time here. After multiple branching and gradations, it finally stuck to my finger.
Internally, I cheered, even though I needed to amplify this achievement a thousand times to achieve what I hope for.
"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
The sound of the door opening reached my ears, so I closed my eyes again and stopped all my acti
ons. I don't want to fall into the same mistake; maybe the "giant leap for humanity" can wait.
______________________________________
note :
1_ The pace of the novel is now slow, but it will improve after two or three chapters, because the first chapters are important
2_When I re-read what I wrote, I discovered that it may seem to some as an introduction to a Chinese agricultural novel, but this will not happen, as I am neither enthusiastic nor a fan of the Chinese power system.
3_I know that my English is bad and not intelligible to the majority of readers, but please correct me if you find any mistakes, and I may improve with time, but I promise you if I get any money from here The first thing I do is look for a professional translator and maybe a proofreader to improve it Therefore, if you find any incomprehensible word, linguistic error, or inconsistency between words and meaning, please refer to it
Finally, I hope you like my work
The jump in language level in this chapter from the last is high, almost as if written by a different author or suddenly getting edited by a second person.
While last chapter, there were a few grammatical errors and I seem to recall one spelling error I was still able to follow the story and guess the intention of the author.. Here I have not noticed any spelling errors (though I am very tired) but the sentences have suffered quite dramatically since last chapter. There are conflicting points such as the mentioned loss of ability to sleep or anything akin to it (implying that the main character was before able to do something that isn’t sleeping but akin to it) before the character I think has a time skip because MAYBE they slept or did something akin to it? Not quite sure. There are conflicting parts within this chapter with unclear meaning.
Moreover, there is the changing of tense, to a non native English speaker they will either not notice this or be massively obstructed by it, all depending on whether they use a translator for it, read it themselves with their limited English, and their first language. To a native, they might not even notice it either as usually people stick to one tense, but they will definitely feel like something is wrong, and once they do notice it the changes stick out quite a bit: the tense of the writing doesn’t always have to be the same, but it should always be consistent with the time skips and context (you have time skips and an example of context would be remembering a past encounter or memory).
Also, try and keep to one style, if you’re using complex language and sentence structure and doing lots of world building; fleshing out characters, scenery etc: then use proper grammar, no triple exclamation marks. If your doing a simple story (usually the kind you see in poor Chinese novels) then use the grammar markers frivolously in order to convey importance and drama to poor speakers of a language without having to actually write in tension and subtlety. Using improper grammar usually detracts from the content of writing so if the content is poor then it is fine and pushes story and progression along with a pike but I can see a lot of effort and time here which it detracts from by making the inner monologue seem childish. Usually more natural readers of English feel a little insulted or annoyed by the extra use of punctuation like they are some child who can’t understand either the excitement, urgency, volume, desperation, etc: denoted by an exclamation mark. For time skips I would also suggest instead of inserting them with an underscore, the amount of time, and underscore, then a new line just having a few empty lines to show a break in the text and story, then have it as the inner thought of a character or as some dialogue as it feels forced and breaks immersion. An example of what I mean is:
And so, I watched as that damned blade fell down upon her neck like some iron bird of prey falling upon a vole. She was dead.
.
.
.
It had been two weeks since my mother had died by the guillotine… etc
(Note that the dots are optional in this case, I just did them because I have to in order to do multiple breaks in a comment. I would suggest using breaks with no dots for a pause in a scene to build drama and tension before answering a climax with a line like “make it so” or “Then do so, I want them dead by the morning” and dots in breaks as I have used in order to break up scenes or to show larger time skips. Main takeaway from this point though is that I would not suggest inserting time skip with punctuation it is usually better to use context as that can be used to also build drama, tension, a character, or story at the same time. It isn’t a dealbreaker at all however: though if you continue I would suggest not using underscores as they are unclear, uncommon, can be easily missed, or mistaken for an error: rather I would suggest highlighting text in bold, underlining it, italics, or a mix of them all (though I would save italics for putting emphasis on words throughout the story in narration, thought track, or dialogue).
Lastly, (though this one is largely personal opinion and would not particularly mind if you were to ignore it) your talk of boredom and madness also doesn’t make sense. Madness itself is any unstable or extreme state of mind, from simply being pure anger, or having a telegraphed response where one mutters cows uncontrollably when they see the colour pink. Boredom absolutely can cause madness, and I am not sure in the chapter whether you are saying this to be so or not as you seem to say both. In fact, causing madness by boredom can usually be done with permanent effects after about three days and was seen as so inhuman that even in mediaeval, Europe and Asia it was not done, and is only recently done by some countries today such as the US with solitary confinement, despite the protest of the UN and other countries for how inhumane it is. Going on from this; stressing how bored a character is and how all they wish is for something to pass the time: going on almost immediately to have them crush their joy when given something at all to do would not be the response of someone isolated of many physical senses and paralysed would have. More that they wouldn’t care about the feasibility of said action and immediately do it, overwhelmed at its possibility.
Overall, it seems like a good story (I can’t tell if you have a plan for it, a rough idea, are one of those authors who have a world in mind and decide what each character would do at a given point and writing the story/timeline from that, or have no plan at all; but there is a lot of potential here with the depth of description and balance between narration, action, and scene setting. Good luck with your writing.
Just read it again and want to point out some more things:
-inventing bad hair, what?
-time in the main character’s soul deforms and ripples? This doesn’t actually mean much/make sense. I know what you are trying to convey by your next line(s) but either don’t say this or say something like “time slows and shrinks as I lose my sense of it, losing myself in the oscillations and movements”
-Panoramic, not Banorami
-Wasn’t he transported to a warehouse earlier (despite being a display piece) why is he back in the hollow of the wall? Was he transported during the time skip or something? Also how did he watch the training of soldiers from either the warehouse or the hollow? Was it his panoramic view? But didn’t he see it from before then? Or was he imagining it? Not sure,
-it is a definite period, not an indefinite period. An indefinite period describes a period of time that has yet to actually happen yet as it will happen in the future and is undetermined; for example you might have to wait in line at a store for an indefinite period of time until the clerk reaches you, or may be put on hold by a business for an indefinite period of time, but you cannot say an indefinite period of time has passed as it is past tense. If you are trying to convey that the main character does not know then say “and unknown period of time has passed” - though this is unnecessary given that the story is in first person: I would simply go with “some time has passed” or “a period of time has passed” as the reader already knows that they themselves don’t know the period of time, and given that the story is first person they can also infer that the main character also doesn’t know.
-“Here the real work began, I started _… how long I’m awake” - not sure if these are supposed to be two separate sentences and you made an error separating them, if you meant to write “I started for however long I’m awake”, or something else.
-after running branches and gradients it arrive to the stick of the finger? Maybe a mistranslation? Also twice as many as these in a thousand? And idiom that has not translated well or do you mean to say something along the lines of “although I’ll need to direct a few thousand more of these in order to…(and then whatever else you want to say)”
-the quote is “This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”…. I would probably change that…
-He doesn’t want to make the same mistake maybe? Wut?
-Again, keep your tense consistent. Re-reading this a few more times I may still have missed a some errors and contradictions as I am VERY tired, it is 3:12am here and am only looking for glaring errors, but I think I understated the issue with tense earlier in my last comment and how much it dissuades good English speakers. All of them will be very bothered by it and I understated how many would notice that it is the tense that is doing it, it would definitely be a majority, and all of them by the end of the chapter. I know it is not the same with all languages and some it depends entirely on the the sentence forms and descriptors for some, but in English tense is just as important in grammar as having your full stops and capital letters on the right places.
Still though, very good and promising story which has me hooked. Please, please do not be dissuaded by my walls of text, I do not mean to put you off of writing and make you feel poor about it, in fact I am very impressed that such good writing is coming from a non native English speaker, I truly mean this only as constructive criticism, not insult or shame. I really hope to see a chapter three after this. A brilliant job.
confirming that I am just a shield, a mere empty husk without a body
Here, and a few spots in later chapters, you use the word "shield" interchangeably with "armor".
It's fine in the poetry segment, as figurative allusions kinda work there and it scans better to a rythem.
But other than that it's quite confusing.
The sound of the door opening reached my ears, so I closed my eyes again and stopped all my acti
ons. I don't want to fall into the same mistake; maybe the "giant leap for humanity" can wait
you made an error here
Genuinamente gostei do poema no começo do capítulo e é a primeira novela que eu leio que tem um , gostei da história e gosto de história com ritmo razoavelmente lento acho que esse é a minha xícara