The wasteland had gone too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that brought relief after a fight—no. This was the silence of something holding its breath.
Aero felt it even through the haze of exhaustion. The second heartbeat he'd heard during the fight hadn't stopped—it had only gone deeper. It was still there, thudding slow and heavy beneath the ash, as if it had sunk back to sleep… or was waiting.
Mica slung his arm over her shoulders, and the moment her hand touched his side, a sharp wince cut through him. She glanced down, lips pursed. "You're bleeding from… everywhere."
"Exaggeration," he muttered, though the taste of iron on his tongue betrayed him.
"You're also too heavy," she said cheerfully, which was probably meant as a joke, but Aero noticed she wasn't struggling at all. Wind curled subtly around her feet, carrying some of his weight for her.
They moved away from the crater where the storm-beast had fallen. The air there felt wrong, like every breath carried dust from bones long buried. Aero kept glancing over his shoulder, half-expecting the beast to reform—but no, there was only the soft hiss of wind dragging ash across glassy rock.
"You're lucky I was nearby," Mica said as they walked. "Otherwise you'd be an attractive smear on the ground right now."
"I had it under control."
"Sure," she said in the same tone you'd use on a child insisting they didn't need help tying their shoes.
They reached a rise in the terrain—a slope of fractured stone leading to an outcropping. Mica guided him toward it. The shade beneath the rocks gave them a brief reprieve from the sun's punishing glare. She sat him down carefully, then crouched in front of him.
Aero kept his eyes on the ground. That heartbeat… it hadn't faded with distance. If anything, it was clearer now, threading through the earth beneath them.
"You're somewhere else right now," Mica said, studying him. "Not just from the fight. What's wrong?"
He almost told her. Almost. But instinct pressed his jaw shut. He didn't know what that thing under the wasteland was, and if it was connected to his strange control over life force, then it was a secret worth keeping—for now.
Instead, he said, "Something's… watching us."
Her eyes narrowed. "The storm thing?"
"No." His gaze drifted toward the cracked horizon. "Bigger."
She didn't laugh or scoff, which surprised him. Instead, she glanced at the ground, then pressed her palm against the ash. "Wind doesn't carry through solid earth," she murmured. "If something's under there… I won't feel it."
Her voice was serious now, stripped of its earlier playfulness.
Aero took a slow breath, feeling for it again. The heartbeat wasn't just sound—it was life force. Old, deep, steady, like the roots that had erupted to help him. But there was weight behind it, a density that made his own energy feel like a spark compared to a star.
A tremor passed through the ground.
Both of them froze.
It wasn't violent—just a shift, like the earth exhaling. Small stones rolled down from the outcropping above them. Mica's hair lifted slightly as if caught in a breath of wind, but there was no wind here.
Then came the sound.
It was faint at first, like someone speaking from the other side of a wall. Not words—more a pattern, rising and falling in a rhythm almost like language.
Aero's vision swam. The green light from before flashed behind his eyes, and suddenly he wasn't looking at the wasteland anymore.
He was looking down.
Down through layers of ash and stone, through a vast, empty cavern where roots as thick as towers hung like veins from the ceiling. They pulsed faintly with green light, converging toward the center of the chamber.
There—resting in the middle—was something colossal.
It was shaped almost like a human heart, but wrong. Too many chambers. Veins and arteries spilling out into the roots. Its surface was stone-like, cracked, and from within those cracks, the green light bled out. Every beat sent a ripple through the cavern walls, shaking loose dust and rock.
And then—its rhythm changed.
A single pulse spiked in his chest, stealing his breath.
He heard it—clear as thought.
—Find me—
Aero gasped and the vision shattered. He was back beneath the outcropping, Mica's hands gripping his shoulders.
"Hey—hey! Look at me!" Her voice was sharp, panic bleeding into it. "You just zoned out and your eyes were… glowing. Not in the pretty way."
He swallowed hard. "I… saw it."
"What?"
"The thing beneath us. It's… alive." His voice was low, like speaking too loudly might draw it closer. "It spoke to me."
Mica sat back on her heels, eyes wide. "And you're telling me this now?"
"I wasn't sure until—" He cut himself off, because the tremor came again, stronger this time. The outcropping groaned, small cracks snaking along its underside.
Mica was on her feet instantly, wind swirling tighter around her legs. "We need to move."
They stumbled out from the shade, Aero leaning heavily on her shoulder. The moment they left the shelter of the rocks, the ground split open behind them. Not wide—just enough for a faint glow to leak through before sealing again.
"Okay," Mica said, her tone forcibly bright now. "That's officially nightmare fuel. We're not camping here."
As they moved, Aero felt the pull again—not in his body, but in the core of his life force. Like a tether had been hooked into him, gently reeling him back toward that heartbeat.
Part of him wanted to follow it. Needed to. The way its energy moved through the earth felt right, like it was part of him.
The other part remembered the storm-beast's roar, the crack of bones under impact, and the way the roots had come without warning.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
Mica glanced at him, then back at the jagged horizon. "Somewhere with more people. Somewhere the ground isn't trying to talk to you."
He almost smiled at that, but it faded when he noticed her hand flexing subtly at her side. Her wind magic was tighter than before, the currents sharper, faster. She was nervous.
They traveled for hours without stopping, the wasteland's sun crawling across the sky until it burned red near the horizon. The tremors didn't return, but the heartbeat stayed with him, quieter now—almost patient.
When they finally crested a ridge, Mica pointed. "There."
Nestled in a valley of blackened stone was a cluster of structures—tents patched from scavenged cloth, walls made from shattered stone slabs, fires burning in pits. People moved between them, some armored in scrap metal, others wrapped in long strips of cloth to keep the ash from their skin.
"Welcome," Mica said with a crooked grin, "to the Ashfall Encampment. If the wasteland hasn't killed them yet, they're either tough, crazy, or both."
Aero looked down at the camp, then back at the endless wasteland behind them.
And beneath them.
The heartbeat pulsed once, slow and deep.
He had the sudden, chilling thought that whatever was down there… might not stay down forever.