Dev Edit New Scenes: Flashback 1 (Patreon)

This is a scene I'm adding all the way back in chapter 2 for the dev edit. Think im going to slide some of these backstory flashbacks in all through out the first act
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Rain, Flashback

“This is where you live?” I asked. A blanket of fog covered the forest. Towering trees, dozens of feet across, made a canopy so thick you couldn’t see the bottom. Birds danced among the leaves. From here they looked like normal birds. I knew from experience they were gigantic, almost big enough to ride on.

We had walked a trailing and sinuous path up a mountain. Feet away from me was a sheer edge, falling down past a world of gray stone. Lichens and plants warred with the rock, claiming places in the sheer face of the cliff to grow, despite the odds being against them. 

Just like me. A weed growing where I didn’t belong, in a world that wasn’t my own.

On the other side, a hole in the mountain opened to a cave, and beside it was a gigantic slab of stone.

A backpack strapped to my back held everything I owned.

“Live here?” The old man snorted, thwapping me on the back of the head with his walking stick.

“Sorry, Teacher.” I said, offering him a salute of closed fists. His eyes glazed over as he stared at me — through me.

“What’s that look for? Get inside.”

I bowed to my teacher again.

He leered at me, sunlight glinting off the bloody red of his eyes. Gray trails followed below his eyes, like the path of a tear falling down his cheek. He supported his weight on his left leg and the cane he held in his right hand.

He was missing the other limbs. I swallowed heavily before turning, stepping into the mouth of the cave. My eyes adjusted, able to see dimly with the light that filtered through a crack in the stone above.

“I don’t understand. How will coming here help me learn to cultivate qi?” I asked, looking around. There was some furniture here. Tables, a cabinet. I heard a horrible groaning noise, turning in panic. Had a beast come from beyond the forest’s territory?

No, the gigantic slab beside the cave mouth slammed shut in front of it.

“Old — old man?” He hadn’t moved that stone on his own, had he? What the hell just happened? “Old man!” I yelled, running back to the entrance and pounding at the stone. What the fuck? He just trapped me in here!

I pushed at it, trying to move it. If he could move it, I could!

It was hundreds of pounds of stone. I might as well have been slamming into a wall.

“Stop struggling and calm down. Sit down. Breath. When you form your Dantian, I’ll let you out.”

“But — you said that could take weeks!” I paled.

“There’s food inside. This teacher has faith in you.” The old man said, his voice somehow loud despite the wall of stone between us. “Well? Time waits for no one. Take it from this old man.”