Kade was yanked to the side. Duskveil had planted Shadowfiber into the mud and wrenched him free. The bite missed; teeth snapped at spraying muck.
He had to stay focused. He couldn't afford mistakes.
Two Stalks peeled out of the morass, joints folding like spider legs while the buried maw hissed and recoiled. The stink of rot and iron hung thick in the air.
Duskveil pulsed faster than his heart. Threads twitched from the hem like hounds on a leash. One Stalk took the strands — black ropes lashed forward, coiling around its carapace and yanking it toward the gaping Dredge Maw as it climbed. The maw closed with a wet, crushing crack.
The second Stalk lunged through the spray of blood and mud. Kade moved before the thought finished: knife low, eyes on the soft gaps between chitin plates. Two quick cuts — an arm shredded, a neck split — then he vaulted back and drove the blade into the worm's flank.
[COMBAT STATUS — BLEEDING: ACTIVATED]
He pulled the blood-knife free and drove it in again to make sure it bled out.
[COMBAT STATUS — BLEEDING: ACTIVATED]
Again and again until the Dredge Maw listed, thumped, then collapsed.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
{CREATURE: DREDGE MAW — CLASS: BURROWER}
{ASSOC. FAUNA: MARROWSTALKS}
REWARD: Common Artifact — Earthrend ShardEFFECT: +25% digging efficiency.
"Really. That's the reward?" Kade said.
[YES], the small system prompt replied.
"No shit, I know. Guess there are still some good things about being human." He stuffed the shard into the inventory. "I'll carry it for now."
The cave yawned ahead. He went inside; the flickering light grew stronger with every step. The air smelled of wet stone; humidity pressed against his skin.
On a stone plinth the artifact waited: a sphere scored with hairline rifts, the fissures inhaling and exhaling the cave's breath. When Kade lifted it, the object pulsed under his palm — not warm, exactly, but aware. He slid it into his pack.
[SYSTEM INFO]
{ARTIFACT: THE THINKING — RARITY: EPIC}
EFFECT: When combined with other artifacts, can CREATE A CREATURE.
NOTE: Emits breathing sounds.
Outside, the plunderers were closing in. Kade met them as he left.
"Hey, little kid," one called, stepping in front of him. "You coming from that center? What'd you find down there?"
Kade stayed silent. The man was a shoulder away—arrogance on his face; sweat and sour hunger in his smell.
"Why don't you answer? You don't have to be afraid." The plunderer put a hand on Kade's shoulder—too familiar—"as long as you give us what we want."
Kade looked him clean in the eyes. "Move your hand. If you don't want to lose it."
The man slipped his hand away, hands shaking as he mumbled an apology. Kade let them be. Not worth the effort.
He pressed on at a hard pace: short, brutal bursts with ragged pauses to bait his body forward. The road shifted—ash thinning, then thickening; swamp giving way to colder, cleaner air as he topped a low ridge. Duskveil tugged sometimes, a firm nudge that kept him on the mantle's path. Scavengers blurred past; he threaded between them without word.
He didn't sprint the entire way. He moved in fitful bursts—short runs between breaths, then slow tramps while his lungs steadied—letting the mantle set the rhythm. Duskveil tugged now and then, a patient, insistent pull that kept him off the worst of the mire. The world softened into travel: half-buried signposts, iron bones of a collapsed bridge, a leaning watchpost that once meant something to someone.
He passed a ruined camp: a pot still on its tripod, blackened spoons, a leather satchel torn open by rats. A child's shoe, crusted with ash, lay on a stone like a small accusation. Kade glanced and kept moving—reminders, not distractions. He had three artifacts to fetch; pity was a luxury he couldn't afford.
At the ridge the air changed—less rot, more ozone, a faint metallic tang that set his teeth on edge. A ribbon of smoke marked a plunderer fire in the valley; he skirted it wide. Once a pair of rust-caked traders argued over a bad trade; once a bone-collared dog followed him for a while then decided better of it and ran off.
Duskveil pulsed against his spine like a tide. He found himself thinking of the sphere—the Thinking—tucked in his pack, how it had breathed like a sleeping thing. Allorio. The name snagged like a thorn. He had orders; curiosity could wait.
The road narrowed to a stony track. Shadows lengthened. He checked the system out of habit.
[DISTANCE: 14 km → 6.2 km][EST. TIME: 4h → 1h45][STAMINA: 62% → 34%]
He walked the last half hour slower, more careful, feeling each step as if it might be the wrong one. The marker for the northwest site showed up on the edge of the ridge—a slate ruin half-swallowed by moss. He breathed in, felt Duskveil's tug sharpen, and started down.
[STAMINA: 30%][RESTRECOMMENDED]
Kade didn't bother.
The terrain shifted again—this time inside his head. The rhythm of his feet made room for other rhythms: the mantle's patient tug, the system's soft arithmetic, the thin voice that counted distance and cost. Thinking became another track underfoot: what to do if someone followed, what to trade, what to burn first.
He dropped from the ridge into a bowl of old stone. Moss smothered carved reliefs; a row of collapsed pillars formed a broken gate. The air tasted of cold iron and old smoke, like a place people had left in a hurry and never finished leaving. Shadows pooled in the hollows between the ruins.
Duskveil's hem pressed against his calves, nudging him toward a collapsed archway where the mantle's pull felt sharper—an almost human insistence. Kade skirted the arch, keeping low. He moved with the practised economy of someone who measured every breath: small, silent steps; breaths timed with the wind; the knife never fully sheathed.
Halfway into the courtyard a thin film of webbed fungus clung to the stones. It hummed faintly when he brushed it, like a tongue testing him. Kade paused and touched it with a gloved finger; the system annotated it before he could think to ask.
[ENVIRONMENT: BIOFILM — SENSORY FEEDBACK: REACTIVE]
[WARNING: CONTAINS NEURO-ORGANOIDS — AVOID DIRECT CONTACT]
He wiped his glove on his cloak and moved on. The ruins offered no obvious sentries, but movement is not always loud. He smelled it before he saw it: a wet, papery rustle, the metallic ghost of wings. Something watched from the hollow of a toppled column, eyes pinpricks of reflected light.
Kade didn't look up. He let Duskveil do the patterning: a tiny tug left, then right—test, map, suggestion. The hem slipped a fraction; the watcher shifted its weight and fell silent. Small mercies counted here.
The artifact chamber sat beneath a collapsed doorway, a low cavern lit by a shallow pool that reflected a pale, wrong light. A stone plinth rose from the center; on it rested a sphere, hairline rifts running across its skin. The fissures inhaled and exhaled the cave's breath, drawing air in and letting it go as if the object were breathing the space itself. It didn't feel like a thing so much as a mind folded small.
He stepped to it. The air tasted metallic. For a second the mantle twitched as if reluctant, then steadied—Duskveil's consent, or its calculation. Kade reached out, fingers steady.
When his palm met the surface, the sphere answered with a soft pulse — not warm but aware, as if something inside had turned its attention to him.
[SYSTEM INFO]
{ARTIFACT: THE THINKING — RARITY: EPIC}
EFFECT: When combined with other artifacts, can CREATE A CONSCIOUS CREATURE.
NOTE: Emits faint cognitive resonance; attunement may influence holder's thoughts.
Kade started to see things: faint images at the edge of his sight, half-remembered rooms and a single mouth shaping one word.
Stay.