The morning came too early, announced by a chorus of creatures Caelan couldn't name singing songs he didn't understand. He woke stiff and sore in Keeper Torvath's dwelling, his body protesting the previous days' exertions in ways that reminded him he was still recovering from nearly being digested.
Torvath was already awake, sitting cross-legged on a moss cushion with his eyes closed and hands pressed against the living wall of the structure. The old man's skin glowed faintly with bioluminescence, pulsing in rhythm with the tree itself.
"You wake loudly," Torvath said without opening his eyes. "Your Life Current crashes against the world like a stone in still water. Learn silence, or you will never survive here."
Caelan sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I don't know what that means."
"No. You don't." Torvath's eyes opened, ancient and measuring. "Which is why you will learn. Verik will teach you the ways of the hunt. Try not to die in the process."
As if summoned by the mention of their name, someone ducked through the entrance—a young man, perhaps in his early twenties by human standards, though Caelan had no idea how that translated to his current species. He was lean and tall, even by the standards of the People, with skin that shifted between deep green and bronze. His hair was pulled back in a complex series of braids that incorporated living vines, and his eyes were a startling gold color that caught the morning light.
"So you're the anomaly," Verik said, looking Caelan up and down with unconcealed skepticism. "Torvath says you don't remember how to be one of the People. That you move wrong, think wrong, exist wrong."
"Good morning to you too," Caelan muttered.
Verik's lips twitched in what might have been amusement. "At least you have some fire. Come. If I'm to waste my time teaching you, we might as well see what you're capable of. The Sacrifice of Breath is in three days—if you're not ready by then, you'll drown or freeze, and I'll be blamed for inadequate instruction."
"The Sacrifice of what?"
"Breath." Verik gestured impatiently. "The rite of passage. You submerge yourself in the Sacred Pool, expel your life force, embrace death's cold darkness, and if you're worthy, the Life Current strengthens your body and soul before returning you to the surface. It's how children become adults among the People. Torvath insists you must participate, memory loss or not."
Caelan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. "And if I'm not worthy?"
"Then you die," Verik said simply. "But don't worry. Most survive. Probably. Now come—daylight is wasting, and you have much to learn."
-----
The next three days blurred together in a haze of exhaustion, frustration, and small victories that felt monumental.
Verik was a harsh teacher, but not a cruel one. He expected competence, demanded focus, and accepted nothing less than Caelan's complete effort. But he also showed genuine skill in his craft, and despite his initial skepticism, seemed to warm slightly as Caelan proved willing to learn.
"You hold the spear-bow like you're afraid it will bite you," Verik said on the first morning, adjusting Caelan's grip on a weapon that looked like a crossbow but was made entirely from living wood and fibrous cord. "It's a tool, not a threat. Feel how it wants to move. The growth-spine here"—he tapped a ridge along the weapon's stock—"carries tension from the draw-vines. When you pull back, you're not fighting the weapon, you're working with it. Understanding?"
Caelan tried again, and this time the spear-bow settled more naturally in his hands. When he pulled the trigger mechanism—a seed pod that clicked when compressed—the projectile flew true, embedding itself in a target fungus twenty paces away.
"Better," Verik admitted grudgingly. "You learn quickly, at least. Most initiates take days to understand the harmony between hunter and tool."
They practiced tracking next, following the signs that creatures left in the forest. Verik moved through the undergrowth like water, disturbing nothing, his presence barely registering in the complex ecosystem around them. Caelan, by contrast, felt like a blundering giant, his every step announcing his presence to everything within earshot.
"You're too much in your head," Verik said, crouching beside a set of tracks that Caelan could barely see. "You think about where to step instead of feeling it. The Life Current flows through everything—the moss, the soil, the air itself. Stop trying to move through it. Move with it."
"I don't know how to do that."
Verik was quiet for a moment, then pressed his hand against the ground. "Close your eyes. Stop thinking about what you see. Feel the forest breathing. The slow pulse of the trees drawing water from the soil. The quick flutter of insects moving through the undergrowth. The warm presence of larger creatures nearby. It's all there, all connected. You just have to stop being separate from it."
Caelan closed his eyes and tried. At first, there was nothing but darkness and the ambient sounds of the forest. But then, gradually, he began to sense… something. Not quite sound, not quite touch, but a presence. A rhythm. Like being in a room with someone else and knowing they were there even without seeing them.
The trees around him hummed with slow, patient life. The moss beneath his feet held countless tiny organisms, each contributing to a larger whole. And further out, moving through the undergrowth with predatory grace, something warm-blooded and hungry prowled for prey.
His eyes snapped open. "There's something—"
"A ridge-stalker," Verik confirmed, already moving. "Hunting the same trail we're tracking. Come. Quietly."
They followed the predator's trail, and Caelan found that with his new awareness—however tenuous—he could move more naturally. His steps found soft ground instead of dry branches. His breath fell into rhythm with the forest's own exhalations. He wasn't good at it, not yet, but he was better than he had been.
The ridge-stalker turned out to be a sleek, six-legged creature with a mouth full of crystalline teeth and eyes that glowed with internal light. It was stalking something smaller, something that moved in panicked bursts through the undergrowth ahead of it.
Verik held up a hand, signaling Caelan to stop. They watched as the predator closed in on its prey—a creature about the size of a large dog, with overlapping scales like a pangolin and a face that reminded Caelan somehow of a dragon in miniature. The scaled creature was young, its movements uncoordinated, and one of its rear legs dragged behind it at an unnatural angle.
The ridge-stalker lunged.
Caelan moved without thinking. His spear-bow came up, and he fired. The projectile struck the predator in the shoulder, throwing off its attack. The ridge-stalker spun toward them with a snarl, and for a heart-stopping moment, Caelan thought it would charge.
But Verik was already there, his own weapon raised, and the ridge-stalker apparently decided two hunters weren't worth the effort. It slunk back into the undergrowth, leaving its prey behind.
The scaled creature—Verik called it a "shell-drake," one of the forest's more common omnivores—lay in the moss, trembling. Its leg wasn't just injured; Caelan could see with his enhanced vision that the spine was damaged, severed somewhere in the lower back. The creature would never walk properly again, would be easy prey for the next predator that came along.
"Leave it," Verik said. "It's already dead, just doesn't know it yet. The kindest thing would be to end its suffering quickly."
But Caelan was already kneeling beside the shell-drake, his hands hovering over the injury. The creature looked up at him with eyes that held too much awareness, too much fear and pain and desperate hope.
"I can help it," Caelan said.
"You can't heal a severed spine. Not even the best Life Current healers in the Canopy Cities can do that." Verik's voice was gentle but firm. "This is the way of the forest. Life feeds life. Death makes room for growth. You can't save everything."
"Maybe not everything," Caelan agreed. "But I can save this one."
He placed his hands on the shell-drake's back, feeling the damaged tissue beneath the scales. His enhanced vision showed him the extent of the injury in horrific detail—nerve fibers torn, bone fragments pressing into soft tissue, inflammation spreading through the surrounding area.
This was beyond what he'd attempted before. This was major reconstructive work, requiring not just modification but genuine healing, the regrowth of tissue that couldn't regenerate on its own.
But he had the knowledge. The pod plant's regenerative capabilities. The cellular structures he'd studied. If he could combine them, adapt them, create something new that could bridge the gap in the shell-drake's spine…
"What are you doing?" Verik asked, his voice sharp with alarm.
Caelan didn't answer. He was too focused on the work, on the sensation of his own cells responding to his will. He felt his hands begin to change, glands forming that could secrete growth factors, enzymes that could break down scar tissue, proteins that could guide nerve regeneration.
And then he was pouring those compounds into the shell-drake's wound, watching with his enhanced vision as tissue began to knit together in ways that nature alone couldn't accomplish. New nerve fibers sprouted, guided by the chemical signals he was providing. Bone fragments were broken down and reformed. The inflammation receded as his enzymes cleared the damaged tissue.
The shell-drake stopped trembling. Its breathing steadied.
And Caelan's world became pain.
It felt like his hands were being torn apart from the inside. Like every cell in his body was screaming in protest at what he was asking it to do. He'd pushed too far, attempted too much, and now his body was paying the price.
He collapsed beside the shell-drake, gasping, his vision swimming. The warmth in his chest that usually accompanied successful adaptation was gone, replaced by a cold emptiness that terrified him.
Verik was there immediately, hands on Caelan's shoulders. "You fool! What did you do?"
"Fixed… its spine," Caelan managed through gritted teeth. "It'll… live."
"At what cost?" Verik looked at Caelan's hands, which were trembling and marked with patterns of broken blood vessels beneath the skin. "You nearly killed yourself to save a shell-drake. Do you have any idea how stupid that was?"
"Probably… very," Caelan admitted. The pain was subsiding now, but the exhaustion was overwhelming. He felt hollowed out, like he'd used something vital and wouldn't get it back for a long time.
The shell-drake stood on shaky legs, testing its repaired spine. It looked at Caelan with those too-intelligent eyes, then did something unexpected—it pressed its scaled head against Caelan's chest, a gesture that felt like gratitude.
"Well," Verik said after a long moment. "At least you're committed to your stupidity. Come on. We need to get you back to the village before you pass out. And apparently we're bringing your new friend, because I don't think it's going to leave you alone now."
Verik was right. The shell-drake followed them back to the Singing Grove, staying close to Caelan's side despite Verik's attempts to shoo it away. By the time they reached Torvath's dwelling, the creature had decided that Caelan was its person, and no amount of logic or reason was going to change its mind.
"What is that?" Torvath asked, looking at the shell-drake with a mixture of amusement and resignation.
"A bad decision," Verik said. "He nearly killed himself saving it."
"I see." Torvath studied Caelan, who was barely staying upright. "And did you learn anything from this bad decision?"
"That I can do more than I thought," Caelan said. "And that doing more than I thought is extremely painful."
"Good. Knowing your limits means you can push them intelligently next time, rather than stumbling past them like a blind cave-dweller." Torvath gestured to the shell-drake. "What will you call it?"
Caelan looked at the creature, which was currently investigating the moss cushions with single-minded determination, completely oblivious to the fact that it was knocking over everything in its path.
"Trouble," he said. "I'm going to call it Trouble."
The shell-drake chose that moment to trip over its own feet and crash into a carefully arranged stack of clay vessels, sending them tumbling. Verik caught them before they could shatter, but his expression suggested he wanted to let them fall just to make a point.
"Appropriate," Torvath said dryly. "Now rest. You'll need your strength for the Sacrifice of Breath. And someone will need to teach your companion basic manners before it destroys the village."
-----
The next two days passed in a haze of training and exhaustion. Caelan learned to move through the forest with something approaching stealth, to read the tracks of common creatures, to use the spear-bow with reasonable accuracy. He learned the social customs of the Singing Grove—how to greet elders, how to show respect to the Life Current, how to participate in the communal meals where food was shared freely and conversation flowed in complex patterns of harmony and counterpoint.
And he learned that the village was far more sophisticated than it first appeared.
What he'd taken for simple woven walls were actually complex biological filters that regulated temperature and humidity while preventing insects from entering. The "rope" he'd seen being made contained conductive fibers that could carry signals across distances, forming a communication network throughout the settlement. The grinding stones weren't just shaped—they were grown, their surfaces encoded at the molecular level to break down specific materials with maximum efficiency.
"You thought we were primitive," Verik said on the second day, not quite accusing. They were examining a spear-tip that Verik had grown from a specialized plant, its edge sharper than any metal Caelan had seen. "You looked at our homes and our tools and saw simple tribals living in harmony with nature."
"I…" Caelan couldn't deny it.
"We do live in harmony with nature," Verik continued. "But harmony doesn't mean simple. It means understanding. We don't force the world to give us what we want—we ask, and we listen to the answer. This spear-tip? The plant that produces it wants to be sharp. It evolved to pierce the shells of seed-pods that would otherwise trap its offspring. We simply guided that evolution, encouraged it, gave it purpose. The plant is happy. We have tools. Everyone benefits."
"That's…" Caelan struggled to find the words. "That's incredibly advanced. The level of biological understanding required to do that—"
"Is something every child in the Singing Grove learns," Verik finished. "We've had ten thousand generations to perfect these techniques. Your people—" He paused, seeming to catch himself. "The other tribes, I mean, some focus on different paths. The Canopy Cities in the eastern sky-reaches have grown living buildings that touch the floating islands. The Deep Root tribes can communicate with trees across vast distances. We all have our strengths. But none of us are primitive."
The reminder that there were other tribes, with potentially different languages and customs, sent a small chill through Caelan. He could understand the Singing Grove because this body apparently knew their dialect. But what about the others? How many different peoples inhabited this world, and how many of them would see him as an enemy rather than an ally?
Trouble, for its part, proved to be exactly as much chaos as its name suggested. The shell-drake was affectionate to the point of being a nuisance, constantly underfoot and getting into everything. It had a particular fondness for stealing food—not because it was hungry, but because it thought the game of keep-away was endlessly entertaining. It was also fearless to the point of stupidity, once trying to intimidate a creature three times its size that could have swallowed it whole.
But it was also loyal. When another initiate—a girl named Siara who seemed to find Caelan's confusion about basic customs hilarious—tried to startle Caelan as a prank, Trouble positioned itself between them and made a noise that suggested it would defend its human against all threats, real or imagined.
"Your companion is devoted," Siara observed, laughing at Trouble's fierce expression. "Stupid, but devoted. Those are the best kind."
Caelan found himself becoming attached to the creature despite its flaws. Or perhaps because of them. Trouble didn't care that Caelan was an anomaly, didn't judge him for not knowing things everyone else found obvious. It just wanted to be near him, to play, to exist in the simple way that animals did.
On the evening of the second day, as Caelan sat outside Torvath's dwelling with Trouble curled up against his side, he felt a familiar sensation—that warmth in his chest, that sense of invisible thresholds being crossed. His body had recovered from the strain of healing Trouble's spine, and in recovering, it had become stronger. His hands no longer trembled. His exhaustion had transformed into a deeper reservoir of stamina. The modification that had nearly destroyed him had, in surviving it, taught him something vital about his own limits and capabilities.
He was growing. Adapting. Becoming more than he had been.
And tomorrow, he would face the Sacrifice of Breath.
-----
The morning of the ceremony dawned grey and humid, with mist rising from the forest floor in ghostly curtains. Caelan woke to find Torvath already preparing, marking his face with bioluminescent paint in patterns that Caelan didn't recognize but that felt significant.
"The marks of supplication," Torvath explained. "You enter the Sacred Pool asking the Life Current to accept you, to strengthen you, to recognize you as one of the People. Whether it will…" He trailed off, leaving the implication hanging.
Caelan, Siara, and three other initiates were led through the village in a procession. The entire tribe had gathered to watch, faces solemn and expectant. Children waved farewell. Elders offered blessings in words that flowed like music. Verik stood near the front, his expression unreadable but his posture tense.
Trouble tried to follow, but Torvath gently but firmly prevented it. "This path, the shell-drake cannot walk with you. It will wait. Or it won't. Such is the nature of companionship."
The Sacred Pool lay at the heart of the village, in a grotto formed by ancient tree roots that had grown into complex, cathedral-like architecture. Water filled the pool, fed by underground springs, and its surface was perfectly still despite the movement of air around it. The water itself seemed to glow from within, not with the familiar bioluminescence but with something deeper, older, more fundamental.
Seven elders stood around the pool's edge, Torvath among them. The other initiates looked nervous but determined. Caelan felt his heart hammering in his chest.
"The Sacrifice of Breath," Torvath intoned, his voice carrying the weight of ritual, "is the death of childhood and the birth of adulthood. You will descend into the cold embrace of the Life Current. You will release your breath, your life force, your very being into the waters. And if you are worthy, if you are strong, if you are meant to walk among the People as adults, the Current will strengthen you and return you to the surface."
He gestured to Siara. "Begin."
One by one, the initiates entered the pool. The water was cold enough that Caelan could see them gasp even from the edge. They waded to the center, where the pool deepened into darkness, and there they dove.
Caelan watched with his enhanced vision, saw the thermal signatures of the initiates descending into the depths. One by one, they expelled their breath, the bubbles rising to the surface like offerings. And one by one, after what felt like an eternity but was probably less than a minute, something in the water began to glow. The Life Current responded, wrapping around the initiates, and their bodies were lifted back to the surface where elders pulled them out, gasping but alive, their skin marked with new patterns that hadn't been there before.
Then it was Caelan's turn.
The water was colder than he'd expected, cold enough to steal the breath from his lungs the moment he entered. He waded forward, feeling the pool floor drop away beneath his feet, and dove.
Down into the darkness. Down into water that felt less like liquid and more like the essence of something alive and aware. His lungs burned. The pressure built in his chest. Every instinct screamed at him to return to the surface, to breathe, to live.
He exhaled. Felt his life force—whatever that meant—flow out of him into the water.
And the Life Current responded.
But not the way it had for the others. Instead of the gentle embrace that had lifted them back up, Caelan felt something grab him and pull him deeper. The cold intensified until it felt like his bones were made of ice. The darkness became absolute, pressing in from all sides.
He wanted to panic. Wanted to fight. But there was nothing to fight, and his body had no strength left to struggle with.
This was death. This was the cold, dark embrace Torvath had spoken of. And he was being held under, saturated in it, drowning in something that was both water and energy and ancient awareness all at once.
His consciousness began to fracture. Thoughts became disconnected. Memories—both his current life and fragments of something before—swirled together in a confused mass.
And then, just when he thought the darkness would claim him entirely, something changed.
The Life Current didn't just strengthen him. It *rewrote* him.
He felt his cells reorganizing, his tissues restructuring, his very biology being edited by forces that operated on principles he couldn't begin to understand. It was like the data crystal but a thousand times more intense, information pouring into him not from an external source but from the living world itself.
His skin developed new patterns—flowing lines of bioluminescence that traced pathways through his body like a circuit diagram made flesh. But there was something else too, something that felt wrong even as it was being written into him. On his left shoulder, a mark appeared: a spiral that turned inward on itself, dark against his iridescent skin, absorbing light rather than reflecting it.
The mark of entropy. Of decay. Of things ending.
A bad omen.
The Life Current released him, and he shot toward the surface, propelled by forces beyond his control. He broke through the water gasping, his lungs burning as they remembered how to breathe.
The elders pulled him out, and he collapsed on the stone edge of the pool, his body trembling violently. He was dimly aware of concerned voices, of hands checking him for injury, of Torvath's sharp intake of breath when he saw the mark on Caelan's shoulder.
But mostly, he was aware of the changes inside him. His muscles were denser, stronger. His senses were sharper. The exhaustion from healing Trouble was completely gone, replaced by vitality that felt almost overwhelming. He could sense the Life Current now, not just as a vague awareness but as a tangible thing, flowing through him and around him in currents that connected everything to everything else.
He had been strengthened. But he had also been marked.
And as consciousness faded and darkness claimed him again—this time the natural darkness of exhaustion rather than drowning—his last thought was that something had recognized him in those depths. Something had judged him and found him… what? Worthy? Dangerous? Both?
The answer, like so many things in this new life, would have to wait.
-----
Caelan woke in Torvath's dwelling with Trouble curled up against his side, the shell-drake's steady breathing a comfort against the confusion in his mind. The light filtering through the walls suggested it was late afternoon—he'd been unconscious for hours longer than the other initiates.
Torvath sat nearby, his expression grave.
"The mark on your shoulder," the old man said without preamble. "Do you know what it means?"
Caelan touched the spiral, feeling the strange texture of it—not quite a tattoo, not quite a scar, but something in between. "No."
"It is called the Spiral of Endings," Torvath said quietly. "It appears when the Life Current senses one who walks the path of entropy, of decay, of things falling apart. In our history, those who bore such marks became either great healers—understanding death so well they could prevent it—or great destroyers. There is no middle ground."
"Which am I?"
"I do not know. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. The Life Current is not always clear in its intentions." Torvath leaned forward, his ancient eyes searching Caelan's face. "But this much is certain: you are bound now to forces beyond your understanding. The Sacrifice of Breath has accepted you as an adult of the People, yes. But it has also marked you as something more. Something other. And in times of change like these, that may be exactly what the world needs."
"Or exactly what it should fear," Caelan said.
"Yes," Torvath agreed. "That too."
Outside, Caelan could hear the sounds of the village returning to normal life. Voices called to each other. Children laughed. The eternal rhythms of the forest continued, indifferent to the drama of one anomalous stranger and his strange companion.
But Caelan felt the weight of the mark on his shoulder like a brand. He'd wanted to understand this world, to find his place in it. And now he had, after a fashion.
He was an adult. He was marked. He was changed.
And whatever came next, he would face it with Trouble at his side and the knowledge that the Life Current itself had judged him worthy—or at least, worthy of further observation.
Tomorrow, Verik had said, they would begin preparing for the first true hunt. A test of his new abilities and his place among the People.
But tonight, he rested. And tried not to think about the spiral on his shoulder, or what it meant to be marked by entropy in a world that lived in harmony with growth.
The answers would come.
They always did.