The march from the shoreline to the western cliffs was a journey through a literal graveyard of expectations. Every step Alaric took was a battle against his own biology. In this world, the air was usually thick with the invisible hum of mana, a source of vitality that fueled the very cells of every living being. But here, in the Muted Mist of the Ouroboros Archipelago, that hum was replaced by a terrifying, hollow silence. For a prince born with Mana Sclerosis, the silence was not new, but the density of the mist made the world feel like it was composed of lead.
"Pick up your feet, you miserable wretches!"
General Kaelen's voice was a jagged blade that cut through the thick humidity. He stood at the midpoint of the long, bedraggled line of five hundred convicts, his hand resting perpetually on the hilt of a sword that no longer glowed with the sapphire light of the Valerian Hegemony. Kaelen was a mountain of a man, his armor rusted by the salt spray, yet he moved with a terrifying efficiency that the starving men around him could only envy.
Alaric stumbled, his boot catching on a sharp shard of volcanic basalt. He felt himself falling, the gray sand rushing up to meet him, before a massive hand gripped his collar and hauled him upright with a violent jerk.
"Keep your balance, Prince," Kaelen growled, his face inches from Alaric's. The General's breath smelled of dried meat and sour wine. "If you break an ankle here, I will not waste the manpower to carry you. I promised your mother I would see you reach the interior of this island alive, but I never promised you a comfortable ride."
Alaric looked into Kaelen's eyes, finding only a cold, dutiful resentment there. "I didn't ask for a comfortable ride, General. I only asked for the direction of the cliffs. My mother, Lady Elara, would be disappointed to see you've lost your manners along with your commission."
Kaelen's eyes flared with a brief, dangerous spark. "Lady Elara was a saint who died protecting a void like you. Do not use her name to lecture me. Move!"
He shoved Alaric forward. The Prince regained his footing, his heart hammering with a mixture of exertion and a strange, cold clarity. He was Sato Kenji, a man who had mastered the laws of thermodynamics, and he was Alaric von Valerius, the boy who had been thrown away like trash. The two identities were fusing, creating something new and analytical.
As the column reached the massive overhang of the western cliffs, the temperature dropped significantly. The black basalt walls rose hundreds of feet into the swirling gray mist, creating a natural cathedral of shadow. The convicts collapsed where they stood, their chests heaving in the damp air.
"Water..." a man moaned near the front of the group. "Please... just a drop."
"There is no water!" Elian, the disgraced 1st Circle Mage, shrieked as he crawled toward a small, stagnant pool nestled in a hollow of the cliff base. The water was a sickly, opaque green, covered in a film of oily rainbow slick. "I have tried! I have tried to call upon the 'Spring of Grace'! The mana is dead! The Goddess has abandoned this place!"
Elian reached into the pool, his trembling hands cupping the foul liquid. He brought it toward his lips, his eyes wide with the madness of thirst.
"Stop!" Alaric's voice rang out, surprisingly sharp.
The Mage froze, his hands inches from his mouth. He looked at Alaric with a sneer. "And why should I stop, Broken Prince? Will you command the water to be pure with your nonexistent magic? Will you weep until the clouds turn to wine?"
"If you drink that, you will be dead by sunset," Alaric said, walking toward the pool. He knelt beside it, his eyes scanning the surface with the precision of a laboratory sensor. "That isn't just mud. That is a concentrated culture of dysentery, cholera, and heavy mineral runoff from the volcanic rocks. Your stomach will cramp so violently that you will rupture your own lining before you can even finish the first gallon."
Kaelen walked over, his heavy boots crunching on the gravel. "It is the only water on this beach, Alaric. If they don't drink this, they die of dehydration. If they drink it, they die of rot. Either way, my vow to your mother ends in a field of corpses."
"I am not going to let them drink that sludge," Alaric said, standing up. "General, I need you to gather the people. I need everyone who can still stand to find me four specific things. We are going to build a solution."
"A solution?" Kaelen scoffed, his arms crossing over his chest. "You sound like a court alchemist. We have no crucibles, no reagents, and no mana."
"I don't need magic to do what I'm about to do," Alaric replied, his gaze locking onto Kaelen's. "I need one of the large wine tuns from the wreckage. I need the finest sand from the high dunes. I need a bucket of charcoal from the ship's burnt-out galley. And I need a pile of gravel from the tide pools. If you want to honor your vow, General, you will get me those materials now!"
For a long heartbeat, the only sound was the distant roar of the surf. Then, Kaelen nodded once, a sharp, begrudging gesture. He turned and began to bark orders. The convicts, driven by the slim hope of survival, began to scramble.
The first hour was a frantic mess of trial and error. Alaric stood over a massive, upright wooden barrel that had once held Valerian red wine. He had used a rusted dagger to punch a dozen small holes in the bottom, a task that had left his soft royal hands blistered and bleeding.
"The sand is here, Sire," a young convict named Sarah said, dumping a heavy sack of white grit at his feet. She was one of the few who didn't look at him with pure contempt.
"Good. Layer it in," Alaric commanded.
He watched as the sand was poured into the barrel. He had instructed them to put a layer of gravel at the bottom, then the sand. He took a bucket of the green pool water and poured it over the top.
The crowd gathered around, their breaths held. They watched the bottom of the barrel. A few seconds later, a stream of water began to leak out of the holes.
"It's working!" someone shouted.
Alaric caught the liquid in a wooden bowl. He held it up to the light, and his heart sank. The water was still yellow. It still smelled of rot and sulfur.
"It is still poison!" Elian laughed, a high, hysterical sound. "You have only succeeded in making the mud more expensive! You are a fool, Alaric! A royal fool playing in the dirt!"
The convicts groaned, their hope vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Some of them began to move back toward the stagnant pool, their desperation overriding their fear of death.
"Stay back!" Alaric roared! He kicked the bowl across the sand, the yellow water splashing against the rocks. "The flow was too fast! The sand wasn't packed tight enough, and the particles were too coarse! We haven't even begun the chemical stage yet!"
He turned back to the barrel, his mind racing through the Library of Modernity. He recalled the specific diagrams of a bio-sand filter. He had forgotten the compaction ratio. He had forgotten that the layers needed to be distinct and compressed to create the necessary resistance.
"Empty it!" Alaric ordered.
"You're wasting time!" Kaelen stepped forward, his hand gripping Alaric's shoulder. "The sun is moving. They are losing their will. If you fail again, I cannot stop them from drinking the poison."
"I won't fail again," Alaric said, his voice trembling with a mixture of exhaustion and fury. "Get me the charcoal. Now!"
He spent the next two hours on his knees. He personally packed the layers. He started with the largest stones at the very bottom to prevent the smaller layers from leaking through the holes. Then, he added the smaller gravel, leveling it with his own hands until it was perfectly flat.
"The gravel provides the structural support for the weight of the water," Alaric explained to Sarah, who was helping him wash the next batch of sand. "Without it, the fine sand would just plug the holes and the barrel would burst. This is the foundation!"
Next came the charcoal. This was the stage that made the mages whisper in confusion. Alaric took the blackened, burnt remains of the ship's timber and crushed them into a fine powder. He layered this several inches thick over the gravel.
"Why the burnt wood?" Kaelen asked, leaning over the barrel. "Is this some kind of primitive ritual?"
"It is not a ritual, it is adsorption!" Alaric snapped, his eyes bright with intensity! "Charcoal has a massive surface area! On a level so small you cannot see it, this black dust is filled with millions of tiny canyons and caves! The organic toxins and the foul gases of the rot are chemically attracted to the carbon! They will cling to the walls of the charcoal like a magnet, allowing the pure water molecules to pass through alone! It is a filter of the invisible!"
The mages looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. They only understood purity through the lens of a "Purify" spell, a magical vibration that erased filth. The idea that filth was a physical object that could be "trapped" was an alien concept to them.
Finally, Alaric added a massive layer of the finest dune sand. He spent nearly twenty minutes tamping it down with a flat stone, ensuring there were no gaps or channels where the water could bypass the filter.
"Now," Alaric said, his voice a whisper. "The water."
He took a fresh bucket of the green sludge. This time, he didn't just pour it in. He laid a piece of clean cloth over the top of the sand to prevent the impact of the water from disturbing the layer. He poured the liquid slowly, watching as it began to seep into the sand.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. The convicts were silent, the only sound being the drip of the mist from the cliff face.
"It is stuck," Elian sneered. "Your 'science' has only succeeded in making a very heavy bucket of mud."
Alaric didn't respond. He stared at the bottom of the barrel. He was recalculating the flow rate in his head. The surface area is three square feet. The sand depth is eighteen inches. The Darcy's Law coefficient should allow for a flow of...
Drip.
A single drop fell. It hit the bottom of the dry wooden bowl with a sharp, clear sound.
It was not yellow. It was not green. It was so clear that it looked like a piece of the sky had fallen into the bowl.
Drip. Drip. Splash.
A steady, rhythmic flow began. Alaric caught a full bowl and held it up. The light from the mist caught the liquid, making it shimmer with a crystalline purity that seemed impossible in this gray, dying world.
"No..." Elian whispered, crawling forward. "No, this is a trick. You've hidden a mana stone in there! You're using a concealed artifact!"
"There is no mana stone, Elian!" Alaric said, thrusting the bowl toward the Mage. "Taste it! Tell me if you taste the Goddess or if you taste the physics of the earth!"
The cheers of the convicts were a balm to Alaric's frayed nerves, but as he watched Elian gulp down the clear liquid, a cold, analytical alarm went off in his mind. The Library of Modernity pulsed with a warning that no one in this magical world could possibly understand.
"Stop!" Alaric shouted!
His voice cracked with a sudden, sharp urgency that cut through the celebration like a knife. He lunged forward, snatching the wooden bowl from Elian's hands just as the Mage was about to take another deep draught. The water splashed against the Mage's tattered robes, and Elian let out a cry of pure, indignant rage.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Elian barked, his eyes flashing with a spark of his former, aristocratic arrogance! "You show us a miracle of clarity, and then you snatch it away like a cruel child?! Do you wish to watch us suffer while you hoard the clean water for yourself?!"
General Kaelen stepped forward, his heavy hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The metal was cold and dead, devoid of the sapphire glow it once held. "Prince, the men are on the verge of a riot. You have given them hope. If you take it away now, even I will not be able to hold back their desperation. Explain yourself!"
"The water is clear, but clear does not mean safe!" Alaric retorted, his chest heaving as he stood his ground! "The filter trapped the silt! It trapped the heavy minerals and the foul odors! But there are things in that water that are too small for sand to catch! Things that do not care about charcoal!"
"Small things?" Sarah, the young convict who had helped with the sand, tilted her head in confusion. Her green eyes were wide with a mix of awe and fear. "Sire, the water looks like liquid crystal. What could possibly be hidden in something so pure?"
"Bacteria! Pathogens!" Alaric shouted, the terms feeling heavy and alien on his tongue! "Think of them as microscopic parasites! They are so small that a thousand of them could dance on the tip of a needle! The filter caught the houses they live in, but it did not kill the monsters themselves! If you drink this now, you may feel refreshed, but in three days, your bowels will turn to water and your fever will burn you from the inside out!"
The crowd fell silent. The mages looked at each other with looks of pure, unadulterated bewilderment.
"Microscopic... monsters?" Elian sneered, though there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes! "If such things existed, the 'Great Healers' of the Capital would have seen them with their mana-sight! You are inventing demons to scare us, Alaric! You are trying to make yourself more important by claiming to see what even the Goddess hides!"
"The Goddess didn't hide them, Elian! Your own arrogance did!" Alaric snapped! "You believe that if a thing cannot be seen with mana, it does not exist! I am telling you that the heat of the sun and the cold of the grave follow rules that have nothing to do with your circles of power!"
Alaric turned back to Kaelen. "General, I need fire. Not a small cooking flame, but a sustained, roaring heat. We need to bring this water to a 'Rolling Boil'!"
"Fire?" Kaelen grunted, looking at the damp, mist-choked wood they had scavenged. "The mages can't even spark a tinderbox in this mist. The humidity is too high, and the mana is too thin to fuel an ignition spell. We have tried for hours! Every match we strike is snuffed out by the dampness before it can catch!"
"Then we will use friction and oxygen!" Alaric commanded! "Sarah, gather the driest driftwood from the center of the ship's wreckage! We will use a bow-drill! And Kaelen, I need a large iron pot from the galley. We are going to cook the death out of this water!"
The trial and error began. For over an hour, Alaric worked alongside the convicts. His hands, already raw from the barrel construction, were now blistering as he worked the bow-drill. The humidity of the mist was an unrelenting enemy. Every time a tiny spark appeared in the tinder, the heavy, damp air would settle over it like a wet blanket, extinguishing it instantly.
"It is a waste of time!" a convict cried out! "Just let us drink! I would rather die of rot in three days than die of thirst in one!"
"Shut up and keep blowing on the embers!" Alaric roared, his face covered in soot!
He adjusted the angle of the spindle, recalling the physics of ignition—the flash point of the wood. I need more surface area for the heat to concentrate! He began to shave the wood into curls as thin as parchment.
Finally, a thin, wispy trail of smoke began to rise.
"Don't stop!" Alaric whispered, his heart pounding! "Gently! Feed it oxygen, but don't blow it away!"
With a sudden, brilliant whoosh, a tiny orange flame licked upward. The crowd gasped as if they had seen a dragon take flight! In a world where fire was usually summoned with a snap of fingers, the sight of a man birthing a flame from two pieces of wood was a primal, staggering revelation.
"He... he made fire from nothing!" Sarah whispered!
"Not from nothing, Sarah!" Alaric panted, his eyes reflecting the growing orange glow! "From work! From kinetic energy!"
They set the iron pot over the flames. Alaric watched with an intensity that bordered on obsession as the clear water began to shimmer. Small bubbles began to form at the bottom of the pot, rising to the surface in lazy streams.
"Is it ready?" Kaelen asked, watching the steam rise.
"No! Not yet!" Alaric waited. He knew the thermal death point of most pathogens. "It must reach the boil! It must churn like a stormy sea!"
Minutes passed. The tension in the cave was thick enough to taste. Finally, the water erupted into a violent, rolling boil. Steam billowed out, filling the overhang with a warm, moist cloud.
"Now," Alaric said, his voice weary but triumphant. "Let it boil for ten minutes. Then, we let it cool. Only then is it truly pure."