…
When Gold opened his eyes, the ceiling was different. No more towering cavern roof. Just a low curve of stone above him, painted with the orange of nearby lamplight. The shadows burned slowly and steady.
A small twitch ran through his body and he grunted. The pain was still there, but it had shifted. Less like being torn open, more like a deep, throbbing heat.
"Don't move," Eyviria said beside him.
Her hand was pressed against his ribs, bare this time, cool in contrast to his skin. One of her tentacles lay coiled lightly across his chest, reacting to his heartbeat.
"I don't understand," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Veyria take a week to mend a bruised lung. Restrana aren't in any way faster. So why is your body healing this quickly…?"
Her fingers shifted slightly. "Your cells are moving as if ordered," she whispered. "Not by instinct."
Gold turned his head a fraction. She met his gaze.
"How long…" he began.
"You've been unconscious for ten hours," Eyviria said, cutting him off.
Gold blinked. His injuries should not feel this… dulled. "I don't understand," he said.
"Something changed," Eyviria replied. "I noticed it earlier too. No one learns to manipulate their influence that quickly."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, pale crystal. She set it gently against his sternum. The stone warmed instantly, a faint glow waking in its centre.
"You're doing it on instinct now," she said, watching the light with a parted mouth. "Gold… you're not normal."
She removed the stone, closing her hand around it again.
He could feel the others' presence without looking. The quiet shift of weight, the held breaths. They were standing just beyond the edge of the lamplight, listening.
"I know," Gold said simply. "I just don't know why."
Eyviria had no answer. She defaulted to what she could measure. "At this rate, with rest, you'll be fine in a day," she said. "I was ready to turn us back because of your injuries, but… I think we can continue."
No one argued.
Thus they continued.
…
Eyviria was right. Gold felt stronger.
He could tell even without drawing on his bellow art. Power sat ready in his muscles, coiled and responsive. The deep ache in his chest had faded to a manageable pulse.
He dressed in the spare clothes Ajit had provided, a loose shirt, durable trousers, a belt to hold what he needed. His old armour lay twisted and ruined in the corner. Oddly enough he didn't feel unguarded without it.
Eyviria ducked into the makeshift tent, a simple cloth stretched across a wide crack in the cavern wall, sheltering them from the worst drafts.
"Veyria are in tune with biology," she said suddenly. "We feel the energy of the body. With training, we can look deeper into it. That's what I did with you."
She stepped closer. "With our senses, we can perceive a person as if their body were overlapping ours. The flow of blood. The way muscles tense. Every tiny change."
She studied him as she spoke. "Your energy was… powerful. Slow, but immense. Like a storm rolling in."
She took the same small stone from her pocket and pressed it against his chest again. It shimmered at once, soft light blooming within.
"What even is that?" Gold asked. "You used it before."
"This is what we're down here to find," Eyviria replied. "A pylon. This one is an expresser for light."
She held it up between finger and thumb. "Expressers produce physical effects when you feed them mana. This one should respond to a direct infusion. What's unusual," she added, "is that it produces light just by being near you."
She tucked it away once more. "I use mana to compress space, to heat and ignite air. That's how I create my explosions. If I overuse it, I get sick and weak."
Her eyes slid back to him, studying his face. "You, on the other hand, have been passively circulating your influence through your body for an entire day. I'm honestly surprised you're not curled up from migraines half brain dead."
She turned away with a small sigh. "Let's just find the ore and leave. I'll do a full examination later."
Gold rested a hand over his chest as she left. "I feel fine," he thought. Better than fine, even. Whatever state his body had entered, it felt strange, but not wrong.
Fritt stepped in a moment later, pushing aside the cloth. "Hey, brother. You alright?" His usual grin was dampened, worry creeping through the cracks. "You looked half dead a day ago, and now you're standing like it was just a bad dream."
Gold met his eyes. "It was bad," he admitted. "When that thing threw me, I felt them again. The golden threads. The same ones I saw the day we met."
He looked down, remembering. "I still don't know what they are. But they feel like… a purpose. I don't remember my name. I've felt lost for a long time. But every time I see those threads, something calls me."
Fritt stared at him, then snorted softly. "You really are the strangest man I know," he said. "Nameless, glowing eyes, and now threads and storms in your chest. If you told me you were secretly some legendary hero, I might actually believe it."
He clapped Gold on the back, gentle by his standards. "Come on. Ferra made beef stew, and I managed to snag a bottle of Kopri oil you like."
He slung an arm around Gold's shoulders, guiding him toward the flap. "Eat first. Then we can chase your golden strings."
…
Back on the trail, they returned to where the creature had died.
Half of it was gone.
The bulk of its body still lay near the water's edge, but long streaks of congealed black blood led back into the lake, as if something had been feeding on it and then retreated.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Eyviria hissed. "I was going to have Retrieval come collect this, and it's already half gone?"
She stood over the corpse, fists clenched and gritting teeth, the coat around her shifting with each sharp breath. Kavi hovered at her side, trying to calm her.
Under her instructions, they dragged what remained of the body deeper into the caverns. It took time and care - they didn't know what else might be attracted by the smell. Eventually they found a dry, cold recess in the rock, tucked away from the river. They slid the corpse into the hollow and pulled the spare tent fabric over it, tucking the edges into cracks to conceal the shape.
Only once it was hidden did they move on.
Hours passed in tense steps and quiet breaths. The river kept them company, flowing beside their path like a dark, restless vein.
"Miss Eyviria," Ferra said at last, unable to stand the silence, "you said earlier that the thing Gold killed… resembled a night creature?"
Eyviria's gaze slid to her. "Yes," she said. "Have you ever seen one?"
Ferra shook her head quickly.
Eyviria's eyes drifted to the water. "Pray you never do," she said. "They are… the closest thing I can relate to evil."
Ferra's grip tightened on her zweihander. The air felt colder.
"I saw one when I was younger," Eyviria continued, voice flattening into memory. "Near the Spires, at a settlement where I first joined Cognis. It was as dark as the night sky. Its shape never settled - always shifting, devouring, like liquid death. That settlement was gone by the end of the day."
The group walked in silence, boots scraping stone.
"But what we fought," she went on, steadying herself, "was not the same. It had the same… mystery. But the night creature I saw inspired dread with every breath, as if it was fear itself." She glanced back at Ferra. "That is why so many avoid the outskirts. I suspect what we have seen so far is only a fraction of what this world hides. That's why Cognis exists."
Silence followed for a duration.
Until Gold eventually broke the silence. "I agree," he said. "I faced a night creature once, to buy time for my clients to flee. What we just fought was different. We killed this one. The thing I faced before… its skin healed like darkness itself. It felt near immortal."
He finished speaking just as something tugged at him.
He halted mid-step, brows drawing together. A faint current of energy brushed through his chest, focused, directional. The threads inside him stirred.
"Gold?" Fritt stepped up beside him, scanning the shadows. "What is it?"
Gold stared into the dark ahead, trying to feel past his own heartbeat. "Eyviria," he said slowly, "I think I can feel what you're looking for."
That was enough. They quickened their pace.
Before, they had wandered based on guesswork and stone, mapping every fork, trusting Ajit's compass and Kavi's eye. Now, with every turn, Gold adjusted, following that silent pull. He could tell which paths brought them closer.
They descended further. The cavern narrowed, ceiling lowering, walls closing into a throat of stone. The river slipped away somewhere behind them, replaced by a quieter drip of unseen water.
Then, ahead, in the distant dark, something gleamed.
At first it was no more than a faint vein of light scraped along the wall, but as they drew closer, the glow thickened, condensing into threads that ran like rivers through the rock. "This..." Gold placed his hand on the wall. The tug in his chest tightened. The threads within him felt as if they were being plucked.
Their lights pushed the dark back just enough to reveal it - crystal embedded in the walls. Not in shards or jagged teeth, but as smooth, grown veins of pale stone embedded in the cavern wall. They were a dull grey at the edges, but in the centre, under the thin skin of rock, a soft light pulsed like a fading heartbeat.
Eyviria's eyes widened. "Kavi. Ajit. Tools."
Kavi was already fumbling for his chisels, Ajit unfolding his measuring rod and scribbling onto a half-drawn map. Fritt whistled low. "Now that's new."
Gold stepped deeper without thinking, gliding his hand along the wall. The glow responded. What had been dull became clearer, streams of light sharpening into distinct lines, like tiny paths converging. The pull in his chest matched their rhythm.
"Stop." Eyviria grabbed his sleeve, her grip tighter than he expected. "Stay there." She moved between him and the wall, tentacle uncoiling from her waist to rest against the rock. The crystal dimmed a fraction at her touch, returning to its prior state.
"This is pylonic ore. Raw. Uncut." A smile forcing its way as she muttered those words. "We usually find flecks. Pebbles. Never veins." She laughed.
Ajit ran his hand along the stone just shy of touching. "Look at the structure… it's grown in one direction, like it's being drawn."
"Drawn to where?" Ferra asked.
Gold answered before Eyviria could. "Below." The word simply left his mouth. He didn't know why it felt so certain
Eyviria took out her expresser pylon and pressed it gently against the wall. It answered with a faint hum and a weak, silver glow. When she shifted it toward Gold, the stone in her hand flared brighter. The ore in the wall echoed, a shiver of illumination running through the veins.
Kavi sucked in a breath. "That's not standard output."
Eyviria turned her head slightly, studying Gold. "You're amplifying it. Without trying. Again." She looked back to the ore, smiling behind her collar. "This much material should be enough to supply a dozen pylons. But the resonance is weird. It isn't originating here."
Gold stared at the glowing veins. The golden threads in his chest tugged downward, straining like they wanted to burrow through the stone. "It feels like dust off a larger stone."
Silence settled for a moment.
"That would imply a primary node," Kavi said slowly. "A core. Something feeding this entire system."
"And if we find that," Eyviria added, the edge of ambition in her words, "we can prove a naturally occurring pylon network exists under Aridra. No more scraps."
Ajit tapped the map with his charcoal. "If this ore is growing from somewhere, it means the flow leads somewhere. We should follow the strongest concentration. Let Gold lead, he's apparently our walking detector." He chuckled
Everyone was excited, some more than others as Ferra and Fritt were a bit lost - but the excitement was bleeding into them from the others.
Fritt patted Gold lightly on the back. "See? Legendary hero and now a pylon compass. Talented."
Gold ignored the joke, keeping his focus on the pull in his chest. "I can feel where it thickens." He glanced at Eyviria. "You wanted your ore."
She nodded once. "Then we go deeper. Stay sharp. If the ore is this dense, whatever changed this place wasn't small."