The Ashen Pass was behind them, but the memory of its cold clung to their bones and their spirits. The Wind Dancer flew on, a wounded bird skirting the jagged peaks of the Serpent's Spine, its course set for the mythical lands of the east. The immediate, life-threatening crisis had passed, but it had been replaced by a grinding, soul-deep fatigue. They were not warriors on a quest; they were refugees fleeing a fire, carrying their wounded and their broken hope.
Weeks bled into a month. The brutal, snow-choked heights gradually gave way to a different kind of harshness: the Weeping Canyons. This was a labyrinth of deep, serpentine gashes in the earth, where rivers the color of rust carved their way through layers of multi-hued sandstone. The air was hot and dry, filled with the constant, mournful sound of the wind whistling through the stone arches—a sound that had given the canyons their name. It was a place of stark, terrible beauty, and profound isolation.
They were forced to land frequently, both to conserve the Wind Dancer's strained enchantments and to forage. Their supplies, once plentiful, were running low. The confidence that had once allowed them to plan grand strategies was replaced by the daily, desperate calculus of survival.
It was during one of these landings, while searching for a rumored freshwater spring, that they found the Salt-Folk.
Lyra and Shuya were scouting a narrow side-canyon when they stumbled upon the settlement. It wasn't a town, but a village carved directly into the canyon wall itself, its inhabitants seeming to emerge from the stone. The Salt-Folk were a people adapted to desolation. Their skin was pale and crystalline, their hair the white of bleached salt flats, and their eyes were large and dark, capable of seeing in the near-total darkness of their underground homes. They moved with a silent, cautious grace, and they watched the two outsiders with an unnerving, collective stillness.
The elder of the village, a woman named Anya with hair like a cascade of salt icicles, greeted them. Her voice was the gentle crunch of gravel underfoot. "You carry a great silence with you," she said, her dark eyes lingering not on Shuya, but on the space where Kazuyo's power should have been. "And a light that has forgotten how to burn. The canyon feels your pain."
They were offered water—precious, filtered water that tasted of minerals and stone—and a place to rest for the night. The Salt-Folk were not hostile, but they were reserved, their hospitality born from a deep understanding of hardship, not warmth.
As dusk painted the canyon walls in shades of violet and gold, Anya explained their plight. "The Weeping Canyons are not just our home. They are our protector. But the tears are drying. The Rustwater River slows. The springs are turning brackish. A… a thirst has come to the land. It is not a natural drought."
Amani, who had been quietly listening to the spirit of the canyon, nodded in agreement. "She is right. The land is not just dry; it is being drained. There is a… a siphon. I can feel it pulling the moisture, the very life, from the stone."
This was not the work of a Demon King. It was too small, too localized. But it was a symptom of the same sickness—a parasitic influence on the world, a smaller, more subtle cousin to the Swarm's taproot.
"The source is deep in the Canyons," Anya said. "A place we call the Sunken Cathedral. It is forbidden. The air there is dead. Those who have ventured too close… do not return. Or they return… changed. Hollow."
The description sent a chill through Shuya. It was too familiar.
They had a choice. They could take their water and leave, continuing their flight east. Their own mission was paramount, their need desperate. Or they could stop, in their own weakened state, and face another unknown danger for the sake of a people they had just met.
Lyra argued for pragmatism. "We are in no condition for another fight. We have our own to protect." She glanced back towards the Wind Dancer, where Neema still lay recovering and Kazuyo remained lost in his inner void.
But Shuya looked at the Salt-Folk, at their crystalline, worried faces. He saw their quiet dignity in the face of a slow, creeping death. He remembered Silvervein. He remembered the cost of turning away. His own light was dim, but the impulse to protect, to heal, was a fundamental part of its nature. It was the one part of him Valac had not been able to touch.
"We have to try," Shuya said, his voice quiet but firm. "If we run from every shadow now, we'll forget how to stand in the light."
It was not a decision made from strength, but from stubborn, defiant principle. It was a declaration that even broken, they would not cease to be who they were.
The journey to the Sunken Cathedral took a day on foot. The Salt-Folk guided them to the mouth of a vast, cavernous opening, a sinkhole that plunged into darkness, but would go no further. The air that wafted from the opening was stale and carried a metallic tang.
The descent was treacherous. They navigated by the light of Zahra's sand-orb and the faint, struggling glow from Shuya's hands. The cavern opened up into a breathtaking space—the Sunken Cathedral. Stalactites and stalagmites the size of ancient trees met to form columns that supported a vaulted ceiling high above. In the center of the cavern was a still, black lake, its surface ominously unruffled.
And in the center of the lake, pulsing with a soft, violet light, was the source of the thirst. It was a complex, crystalline structure, like a geode grown wild. It wasn't draining water, but the very concept of flow, of life, from the surrounding rock and air. It was a nullifier of vitality, a smaller, cruder echo of Valac's reality-warping power.
As they watched, a tendril of violet energy reached out from the crystal and touched the cavern wall. The vibrant, mineral-rich rock instantly turned grey and brittle, crumbling into dust.
"This is not a demon," Zahra whispered, her voice full of horror. "This is an artifact. A tool. Something… left behind. Or planted."
They didn't have Kazuyo's silence to sever the connection cleanly. They didn't have Shuya's full power to overwhelm it with life. They had to be clever.
Shuya's weakened light was useless against the crystal itself. But as he watched the violet tendril leech the life from the stone, an idea sparked. Mirror Strike reflected force. But what if the "force" wasn't physical?
"Zahra," he said, his mind working quickly. "The water in the lake. Is it… dead?"
Zahra extended her senses. "Yes. utterly. It is not water anymore. It is just… weight. A void."
"Can you move it?"
Understanding dawned in Zahra's eyes. She nodded, her hands beginning to weave. She wasn't a water-mage, but she was a master of earth and sand. She couldn't command the dead water, but she could command the stone basin that held it.
With a grinding roar, she shifted the bedrock beneath the black lake. The placid, dead water sloshed, and a wave of it washed over the pulsating crystal.
The reaction was immediate and violent. The crystal, a thing that consumed life and flow, was suddenly inundated with the absolute antithesis of its nature—a substance that was the embodiment of stagnation and death. It was like trying to drink poison. The violet light flared erratically, and the crystal structure cracked with a sound like a mountain breaking its teeth.
The siphoning stopped. The oppressive, draining aura vanished.
It was a victory, but a pyrrhic one. They had used death to fight a perversion of life. The method felt unclean, a violation of the principles Shuya was trying to uphold. They had solved the Salt-Folk's problem, but the solution left a bitter taste.
When they returned to the village, the change was already beginning. The air felt lighter. The mournful wind through the canyons seemed to carry a note of relief. Anya placed a hand on Shuya's arm, her crystalline skin cool against his.
"You have given the canyons back their tears," she said. "We cannot repay you. But we can offer you a gift." She handed him a small, rough pouch. Inside were several palm-sized, perfectly flat stones, each one a natural geode split open to reveal a tiny, shimmering cavity of crystal. "Singing Stones. When the wind passes over them, they remember the song of the earth. In the east, where you go, such things are valued. They may open doors that are otherwise closed."
The gift was humble, but it was given with profound gratitude. As the Wind Dancer lifted off from the Weeping Canyons, leaving the Salt-Folk to their slow recovery, Shuya held one of the stones in his hand. It was a small, solid piece of proof. They were still capable of good. Their light, however dim, could still push back the darkness, even if they had to use shadows to do it.
The encounter had been a filler, a detour on their long road. But it had taught them a lesson in pragmatism and perseverance. They were learning to fight not as the Sun-Bearer and the Null-Son, but as survivors, using every tool, every scrap of will, to endure. The journey to the east was no longer a straight line to power; it was a meandering path of recovery, where every small victory, no matter how morally ambiguous, was a step away from the abyss Valac had shown them. The Azure Dragon's domain was still a distant dream, but the Weeping Canyons had reminded them that even on the run, they could still choose to be a light, however flickering, in the world's endless shadows.