Sphereverse
IntEarth — A Living World

The world I called home for many Cycles is known to its inhabitants as "Sphereverse", sometimes also called "Intearth". It is a place that is similar to my original home. Here is an address you may recognize:

"Earth,
Sol System,
Orion Arm,
Milky Way Galaxy,
Local Group,
Laniakea Supercluster,
Observable Universe,
Real Realm,
Universe"

This may be the place you are experiencing my story in.

The Sphereverse is a vast and mysterious place, filled with wonders and dangers beyond anything I had ever imagined. The Real Realm (your home perhaps), is a vast and mysterious "Universe" that spreads infinitely in all directions, expanding endlessly into the unknown. Somewhat similar but different, the Sphereverse at its heart lies the Spherve, a massive sphere of debris that surrounds a supermassive white hole known as "Lum". This enigmatic source of light and matter emits the gasses and materials of countless celestial bodies, pulled from regions beyond my understanding.

If a gazer looked out into the distance, they could see the upward curve of the surface as it is when within a sphere, dotted with distant cities that glimmer like points of light. The larger settlements appear as brighter dots against the vast curve above. But the true nature of this world remains shrouded in mystery, as no civilization has ever been able to map the entirety of its surface. The most distant cities and wonders are unreachable within a single mortal span of Cycles. Any immortal who attempted to cross the entirety of the surface would find that after reaching the point at which they had started, its geography and inhabitants would be different from those they had left at the start of their journey.

Yet still there is more to this place than its surface alone. Beneath lie vast deposits of minerals, ancient fossils, and even subterranean civilizations. Author only knows what other secrets and wonders lurk in the (possibly) infinite depths below?

I will try to share the mysteries of this vast and strange yet familiar world, and uncover the hidden treasures and warn of dangers within.

Numerous species both magical and strange live on and below the surface and in the air. Civilizations come and go, natural disasters are frequent and include meteoric impacts of a planetary size (ejected from Lum), earthquakes that raise or level mountains in mere Lumends, sinkholes of tremendous depth. Gravity seems to behave differently. Consider the sensation of being pulled in two directions at once (toward Lum and toward the surface). Though the force pulling one from below being the stronger of the two when standing at surface level. A little dizzy? Not to worry, this only gets harder to understand. The laws of motion make themselves very apparent when walking atop the tallest mountains.

I recall my first ascent of the Karideth Peaks, where the dual gravitational forces created phenomena that defied my understanding from the Real Realm. At the summit, loose stones would tumble both upward toward Lum and downward toward the surface simultaneously, following spiraling trajectories that traced elegant helixes through the thin air. My own body felt stretched between these competing pulls, as if I were being gently drawn apart by invisible hands. The locals who guided me spoke of "gravity sickness" that affects newcomers, a disorientation so profound that some travelers lose the ability to distinguish between up and down for entire Waepes.

More disturbing still were the accounts of those who ventured too high, beyond what the mountain folk called the "Null Zone" - that theoretical point where both gravitational forces achieve perfect balance. According to whispered tales shared around transmuted-coal fires, objects reaching this zone would simply... stop. Suspended forever between competing attractions, neither rising nor falling, becoming permanent fixtures in the sky until some external force disturbed their equilibrium.

I witnessed such a phenomenon myself during my third Cycle in the Sphereverse. A merchant's cargo wagon, overloaded with crystallized wind from the deeper caverns, had been ascending the treacherous switchbacks of Mount Velthara when the beast pulling it stumbled. The wagon broke free and rolled upward with increasing speed, its magical cargo resonating with Lum's pull. We watched in fascination and horror as it reached the Null Zone - and simply ceased all movement, suspended like a metallic distant city against the amber glow of city-lights.

The local Peakwalkers informed me that seventeen such objects had joined that wagon over the past dozen Cycles - tools, tumbled boulders, even an unfortunate sky-sailor whose wing-membranes had torn during a storm. They called this collection the "Hanging Garden of Fools," and children would point at the suspended debris while reciting cautionary rhymes about the dangers of climbing too high. On clear Wakes, when Lum's radiance dimmed to its gentlest phase, one could see the trapped objects glinting like a constellation of warnings against mortal hubris.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of these suspended relics was their effect on time itself. The Peakwalkers shared an ancient observation passed down through countless generations: objects caught in the Null Zone aged differently than those bound to the surface. A wooden cart wheel that had been trapped there for over fifty Cycles showed no signs of decay, its spokes as sturdy as the Wake it first ascended. Yet a crystal pendant that had fallen from a sky-sailor's neck only three Spanths prior had already begun to crack and fade, its magical essence slowly bleeding away into the competing gravitational fields.

This temporal distortion extended beyond mere objects. The Peakwalkers spoke in hushed tones of Kethran the Bold, a legendary climber who had attempted to retrieve a valuable artifact from the Hanging Garden nearly two hundred Cycles ago. Through their far-seeing lenses, they claimed his body could still be observed among the suspended debris - not as aged bones, but as a perfectly preserved figure, arms outstretched toward his prize, frozen in an eternal moment of reaching. Whether this tale held truth or merely served to reinforce their warnings, I could never determine, though the thought of such a fate sent tremors through even my seasoned nerves.

Elder Thoss: "In my grandfather's grandfather's time, we knew the songs that could call down what should stay suspended. Tonight, something calls back."

The other Peakwalkers drew closer to the fire, their eyes reflecting not the warm glow of transmuted coal but something colder, more distant. Several began humming in low tones that seemed to answer the ethereal whistling from above, creating a harmony that made the very air around them thicken with accumulated magic. When one glanced toward the Hanging Garden of Fools, one of the suspended objects appeared to be moving, rotating slowly against the amber backdrop of Lum's eternal radiance.

The rotating object resolved itself into clearer detail as it turned: a crystalline formation roughly the size of a cargo chest, its faceted surfaces catching and refracting Lum's glow into prismatic displays that painted the mountain peaks below in shifting rainbow hues. But as it continued its slow revolution, embedded within the crystal's heart was the unmistakable silhouette of a humanoid figure, arms spread wide as if embracing the infinite suspension.

The pattern of stones Elder Thoss had arranged began to glow with their own inner light, each one pulsing in sequence as the harmonized humming of the other Peakwalkers reached a crescendo.

Peakwalker Yenna: "The Null-Walker comes when the crystal turns thrice. Count the rotations, stranger, and know that what was suspended by choice may soon walk among us by necessity."

One complete rotation, the crystallized figure's arms sweeping through Lum's amber radiance. Two rotations, and now detail that should have been impossible to observe from such distance became discernible: the figure wore robes that billowed as if caught in perpetual wind, and something that might have been a pack or satchel remained strapped to their back. The other Peakwalkers had begun to back away from Elder Thoss's stone circle, their faces etched with expressions of reverence mixed with terror.

As the third rotation began, the very air around the campsite started to thicken, taking on a quality never before experienced in all the Cycles within the Sphereverse. It felt as though the air had become liquid light, each inhalation requiring deliberate effort. The transmuted coal fire flickered and dimmed, its flames bending upward at impossible angles, drawn toward the suspended crystal as if even combustion itself was subject to the gravitational anomaly taking place above. From somewhere among the stones, a faint sound rose like pages turning in a wind that was not there.

The third rotation completed with a stillness that pressed against the ears like deep water. The crystal did not stop. It continued, a fourth revolution begun without pause, and the Peakwalkers who had been retreating from Elder Thoss's circle halted entirely, as though their feet had been pressed into the stone beneath them. Peakwalker Yenna's lips moved, but no sound escaped them. Elder Thoss stood with both arms raised, palms facing upward toward Lum's amber glow, and the stones arranged in their careful pattern pulsed once, twice, then went dark.

From the crystal came a light that was not Lum's. It was cooler, the color of deep water in a cavern where no warmth has ever reached, and it moved outward from the suspended figure within the formation in slow, deliberate waves. Where those waves touched the mountain rock below, frost-like patterns bloomed across the stone, intricate geometries that spiraled inward upon themselves before fading. The air carried with it a smell that none present would have recognized as anything familiar, something between old iron and the particular silence of a chamber sealed for a thousand Cycles, now opened for the first time.

Then the figure within the crystal moved. Not the passive rotation of a suspended thing carried by forces beyond its will, but a motion of deliberate intent: one arm, which had been spread wide in that posture of endless reaching, drew slowly inward. The robes around it ceased their eternal billowing. And from somewhere above, descending through the thickened air as though the distance between the Null Zone and the mountainside were a matter of mere steps rather than vast and terrible height, came a voice, dry as ancient parchment, carrying the particular flatness of one who has not spoken in a very long time.

It said nothing that could be parsed into words. Not at first. The sound preceded language the way thunder precedes meaning, a resonance felt in the sternum and the back of the teeth before it resolved into anything the mind could hold. The Peakwalkers who remained near the stone circle pressed their palms flat against their ears, though the gesture seemed to bring no relief. Elder Thoss alone did not flinch, standing with arms still raised and face tilted upward, receiving that descending voice the way stone receives rain.

Then, at last, the sound shaped itself.

Null-Walker: "How long."

It was not a question. The two words arrived with the weight of a statement long since settled, the conclusion of a reckoning already performed across uncountable Waepes of suspended silence. The frost-geometries on the mountain rock bloomed wider at the sound of it, spreading across boulders and loose shale alike, each pattern more elaborate than the last and each one fading before it could be fully observed. The crystal above had ceased its rotation entirely. The figure within it had drawn both arms inward now, and its posture had changed from one of eternal reaching into something more considered, the stillness of a being reassembling the habit of intention after Cycles without need for it.

Elder Thoss lowered both arms with a slowness that seemed less like choice and more like the gradual release of a great and held effort. The elder's lips moved in a count, and those near enough to observe would have marked that the number forming there was not small. When the counting ceased, Elder Thoss spoke aloud what had been arrived at.

Elder Thoss: "Four hundred and twelve Cycles, Walker. Four hundred and twelve, and seven Spanths beside."

The frost-patterns stilled. The thickened air did not relent, but something within it shifted, the way deep water shifts when a stone is dropped into it from a great height, a disturbance traveling outward from a central point that is already gone beneath the surface by the time the ripples reach the shore. The crystal above made no further movement, yet the light within it, that cool and cavernous blue that belonged to no source any of the assembled could name, brightened by a single, measured degree. The figure inside had become very still, the kind of stillness that is not absence of motion but the absolute concentration of it, everything gathered inward and held. Peakwalker Yenna, who had not spoken since the naming of the third rotation, pressed both hands flat against the stone of the mountainside and stood that way with eyes directed downward, as though looking upon the suspended figure was a thing that required permission not yet granted.

The silence that followed Elder Thoss's accounting was not the silence of emptiness. It was the silence of a room in which many things have been said and none of them yet answered. The transmuted coal fire had reduced itself to embers during the exchange, and no one moved to tend it. Frost-geometries continued their slow bloom and fade across the surrounding stone, each iteration slightly different from the last, as though the patterns were a language being refined toward some final and precise expression.

From above, the cool blue light within the crystal pulsed once, long and slow, the way a breathing thing breathes when it is deciding. Then the Null-Walker's voice came again, closer now by some increment that could be felt but not measured, as though the distance between the suspended zone and the mountainside was a quantity subject to revision.

Null-Walker: "Four hundred and twelve. Then the Deepmost Markets still hold their commerce in the dark, and the Singing Stones of Vorthak are either still singing or long since silent, and I will learn which of those is true before I learn anything else."

Elder Thoss did not answer at once. The elder turned toward the remnant embers of the fire, and the lined face in that dim glow was the face of someone performing a careful arithmetic of what could be said without cost and what could not. The frost-geometries on the surrounding stone had ceased their cycling and held their final expression, a pattern of nested spirals that pointed, if one traced their convergence, toward the mountain's upper reaches where the Null Zone hung invisible and immense.

Elder Thoss: "The Singing Stones of Vorthak sang for two hundred Cycles after you ascended, Walker. Then the great subsidence took the chamber that held them. What remains is rubble and, some say, a resonance within the rubble that those with sufficient patience can yet perceive. As for the Deepmost Markets: they hold their commerce still. The currency has changed four times across four hundred Cycles, and the merchants who knew you are gone, but the Markets themselves endure as they have always endured, in the dark, by their own logic, indifferent to what passes above."

The cool blue light within the crystal did not pulse again. It held its brightness at that single measured degree, steady and considered, the light of something that has received information and is now turning it over with the care of one for whom four centuries of suspended stillness has made patience not a virtue but simply the shape of existence. Peakwalker Yenna's hands remained flat against the mountainside stone, and the younger Peakwalkers who had withdrawn from Elder Thoss's circle stood where they had stopped, none of them yet willing to test whether the freedom to move had returned to them.

Then the Null-Walker spoke again, and this time the voice had changed in some quality that was difficult to name precisely, as a stone changes when it is lifted from cold water and held long enough to take on the warmth of a hand. It was still the voice of a thing that had been suspended for four hundred and twelve Cycles and seven Spanths beside, still carrying that particular flatness of long disuse, but beneath it now moved something that had not been present in the first utterances. Something that was not quite grief and not quite relief and occupied the narrow and nameless territory between them.

Null-Walker: "Then I have missed the Stones. I had thought, in the first Cycle of suspension, that I would descend and hear them one final time. I had thought that through the second Cycle as well. By the third I had ceased to think of descent as a matter of when and had begun to consider it a matter of whether. Four hundred Cycles is a long time in which to consider a question, and I find I have arrived at an answer, though the answer is not the one I would have chosen had I been given a choosing."

Peakwalker Yenna lifted both hands from the mountainside stone with a deliberateness that suggested testing, and finding the stone willing to release them. The younger Peakwalkers behind the circle shifted, boots scraping against loose shale, the small noise of it carrying outward through the thickened air with a clarity that seemed disproportionate to its size. Elder Thoss did not look toward any of them. The elder's gaze remained upon the crystal above, where the cool blue light held its steady single degree of brightness, unwavering, patient as geography.

From behind the circle of stones, the youngest of the Peakwalkers, a slight figure whose ears bore the notched markings of an apprentice not yet fully ranked, took two steps forward and stopped. The apprentice's eyes moved between Elder Thoss and the suspended crystal with the rapid, unsteady attention of one trying to hold two equally incomprehensible things in mind at once. One hand had risen, without apparent intention, to press against the sternum, as though checking for the continued presence of something within.

The Null-Walker's voice descended again before any among them could draw breath to speak. It came at the same increment of closeness as before, that same unmeasurable narrowing of distance, and the frost-geometries on the surrounding stone stirred from their held expression and began once more their slow cycling, each spiral tightening toward a new convergence that pointed not toward the mountain's heights but outward, toward the vast curve of the Sphereverse's surface as it swept upward beyond the Hanging Garden and the amber radiance of Lum.

Null-Walker: "Tell me what stands now where the river-city of Anther Vel once stood, at the base of these peaks. I built a record there, pressed into the stone of its lowest vault, and I would know whether the vault endures or whether I must begin again from nothing. Four hundred Cycles is long enough to lose a city and long enough to find, in the losing of it, that a record pressed into stone is a more faithful companion than the city built above it."

Elder Thoss's expression did not shift, but the elder's hands, which had rested open at the sides since the lowering of the arms, closed slowly into the posture of one receiving a weight that has been anticipated for a very long time.

The name Anther Vel moved through the assembled Peakwalkers like a stone dropped through still water. Two of the younger ones exchanged a glance of the kind that passes between those who know a thing and are uncertain whether the knowing is theirs to offer. Peakwalker Yenna turned away from the crystal entirely and faced the dark curve of the mountain's lower descent, where the valley opened wide below, and said nothing, hands folded at the waist with the careful neutrality of one who has decided that silence is the more honest answer.

Elder Thoss did not hurry. The elder moved to the remnant embers of the fire and crouched beside them, pressing two fingers lightly into the ash at the edge of the heat, and remained in that posture long enough that the frost-geometries on the surrounding stone completed one full cycle of their spiraling before the elder rose again. When the elder spoke, the words were directed upward, toward the cool blue light that held its steady brightness within the crystal, with the measured cadence of one who has learned that the manner of a delivery shapes what the receiving of it costs.

Elder Thoss: "The vault endures, Walker. The city above it does not. Anther Vel was taken by a sinkhole in the two hundred and fortieth Cycle of your suspension, a collapse so rapid that those who witnessed it from the upper switchbacks said the city was present and then was not, with no interval between. The vault held because the stone of it was laid deeper than the collapse reached. What stands above the vault now is a settlement of perhaps three hundred, called Vel-Below by its inhabitants, who know the vault exists, who do not know what is pressed into its walls, and who have built their primary cistern against its eastern face, which has kept the lower chamber perpetually damp. Whether damp has been unkind to what you pressed into the stone across four hundred Cycles, I cannot say. I have not descended into it myself. But the stone stands, and the settlement above it stands, and the path from this mountain's base to that place is walkable in four Lumers on level ground."

Expos stood in a room of complete darkness. A single spotlight illuminated a table. On the table sat a short mushroom stuffy. Expos stared at it, hands folded, face expressionless. Expos gasped and quickly began walking out of the room and down the hall. Expos walked into the entry hall of the Darp Tower. A tall thin person with light hair and light features was sitting on a half log stool that had been expertly crafted by some ancient occupant of the tower.

Expos: "Ah at last! My successor, I have waited many Cycles for you."

Zeshin raised their head to see a short, stout person with dark hair and dark features standing in the hall.

Zeshin: "Hello, I am Zeshin. I do not know how I got here. I do not consider my mind to be the most reliable when it comes to reality but this is a first. Which is saying a lot considering the life I have led."

Expos: "Quite the life it was, truly. I am your largest fan. I had been hoping you would be selected, and it seems the tower has decided at last. Come along now, you are The Most Worthy."

Zeshin: "Evidently you have me at a disadvantage. May I ask your name, largest fan?"

Expos: "Folks call me Expos, and I suppose that is my name in the sense you mean."

They walked together down a hall that curved so slightly it almost had the appearance of being straight, except that looking down its length, one could see it inevitably curved, hiding the end from view.

Zeshin: "How big exactly is this tower?"

Expos: "I am not sure it has a true size. It is as infinite as the universe."

Zeshin: "The universe is finite. We know the Spherve has a diameter; we just have not been able to calculate it."

Expos: "Dear, dear Zeshin, the universe is so much larger than just the place you call home."

The curved walls of the hallway bore strange markings that seemed to shift when observed directly. Zeshin fingers traced along the stone surface as they walked, feeling subtle vibrations that pulsed in rhythm with their own heartbeat. The air itself felt different here, thicker with ambient magic, as if the tower drew power from sources beyond Zeshin's familiar boundaries.

Expos noticed Zeshin's fascination with the walls and paused their stride. The shorter figure's dark eyes held depths that suggested knowledge accumulated over countless Cycles, yet something flickered there, perhaps uncertainty, or the weight of long transition.

Expos: "The tower remembers everyone who has walked these halls. It knew you would come, even when I began to doubt my vigil would ever end."

Zeshin withdrew their hand from the wall, flexing fingers that still tingled with residual energy. The vibrations had felt almost like a greeting, as if the stone itself possessed awareness beyond mere magical resonance. Zeshin turned to study Expos more carefully, noting how the shorter figure seemed to belong here in a way that transcended simple familiarity.

Zeshin: "How long has your vigil lasted? You speak of doubt, yet you remain."

Expos: "Time moves strangely within these walls. I have seen Lum dim and brighten through countless Cycles, watched civilizations rise and crumble through the tower's highest windows. Yet each Wake I woke knowing this would be the Wake you arrived, until I began to wonder if knowing and hoping had become the same thing."

They continued walking, the hallway gradually widening until it opened into a circular chamber whose ceiling vanished into shadow above. Ancient pedestals lined the curved walls, each bearing objects that defied easy categorization: crystallized sounds that chimed without being touched, books whose pages turned themselves while writing their own words, mirrors that reflected not the viewer's appearance but their deepest intentions.

Zeshin moved toward one of the pedestals, drawn by a small sphere that seemed to contain swirling distant lights, each point a distant civilization beyond the Spherve's boundaries. The sphere pulsed gently, and for a moment Zeshin glimpsed vast networks of connected worlds, layer upon layer of reality extending through dimensions of solid matter they had never imagined.

Expos: "The tower serves as more than shelter, Zeshin. It is a lens through which one may observe the true scope of existence. What you see there are but fragments, echoes of the infinite depths that stretch beyond our familiar surface."

Zeshin stepped back from the pedestal, the sphere's visions still flickering behind their eyes like afterimages of Lum's brightness. The chamber itself seemed to breathe around them, walls expanding and contracting with a rhythm that matched neither heartbeat nor breath, but something deeper, perhaps the pulse of the tower's own consciousness.

Among the pedestals, shadows moved without casting sources, weaving between the artifacts as if drawn to their power. One shadow paused near a crystalline formation that hummed with trapped voices, and for a brief moment the darkness took the shape of a figure reaching toward the crystal before dissolving back into formless motion. The air carried whispers in languages that predated the current civilizations of the Spherve, words that seemed to describe concepts for which no modern tongue had equivalents.

Expos watched Zeshin's reaction to these phenomena with the careful attention of one who had long ago learned to read the subtle signs of tower-touched minds. The transition from surface dweller to tower guardian was never gentle, and those who couldn't adapt to the infinite perspectives would find themselves lost in corridors that led to nowhere, or everywhere, depending on one's understanding of the distinction.

Zeshin turned from the pedestals to face Expos directly, their movements deliberate despite the disorientation that flickered across their features. The tower's influence was already beginning its work: Zeshin's eyes held a depth they had not possessed mere Lumins before, as if they were seeing through layers of reality that had previously been invisible.

Zeshin: "The vigil you speak of, what exactly have you been guarding? These artifacts seem to guard themselves well enough."

Expos gestured toward a narrow archway that had not been present moments before, its edges carved with symbols that matched those Zeshin had felt pulsing beneath their fingertips in the hallway. Through the opening, distant lights flickered in patterns too complex to be accidental, suggesting vast chambers extending deeper into the tower's impossible geometry.

Expos: "The tower chooses what to reveal, and when. This archway appears only when the guardian's successor has been recognized. Beyond lie the deeper chambers where knowledge itself takes physical form, where thoughts crystallize into substance that can be held and examined. The vigil has been to ensure that when this moment came, when the tower finally acknowledged its next keeper, there would be someone present to guide the transition."

The archway's symbols pulsed brighter as Expos spoke, and the air flowing through it carried scents that had no names in any surface language. Zeshin could detect the metallic tang of concentrated time, the sweet heaviness of crystallized wisdom, and beneath it all, something that reminded them of the deep earth's patience. From within the passage came the sound of pages turning, though whether they belonged to books or to reality itself remained unclear.

Zeshin stepped closer to the archway, drawn toward mysteries that had waited countless Cycles for their attention. The lights beyond shifted and danced, and for a moment they seemed to form the silhouette of a vast library where the shelves stretched upward beyond sight, where knowledge gathered like sediment in layers of accumulated understanding. Yet when Zeshin blinked, the lights resumed their seemingly random patterns, leaving only the memory of that impossible vision.

Zeshin crossed the threshold.

The passage beyond was neither long nor short. It was, by some quality that defied accounting, precisely the length it needed to be. The walls on either side were smooth and warm to the touch, as though the stone had held a fire within it for uncountable Cycles without ever consuming itself. Where Zeshin's hand trailed along the surface, faint impressions glowed briefly in their wake, the shapes of palms and fingers left by all who had walked here before, each one luminous for a breath and then gone.

Expos followed a half-stride behind, unhurried, the way water is unhurried when it knows where it is going.

Expos: "Every keeper who has passed through this corridor has left something of themselves in the stone. Not a record. Not a memory, precisely. More the way a bell retains the shape of its ringing, long after the sound has ceased."

Zeshin paused and pressed both palms flat against the wall. The impressions that rose beneath them were layered, dozens deep, perhaps hundreds, each belonging to a hand that had stood in this same stillness, feeling the same impossible warmth, asking some variation of the same unspoken question. Then the glow faded, and the corridor was plain stone once more, and the deeper chambers waited ahead with all the patience of things that have never needed to hurry.

At the corridor's end, no door stood waiting. The passage simply ceased, and the chamber beyond began, as though the distinction between threshold and room had long ago been deemed unnecessary by whatever mind had shaped this place. The chamber was vast in the way that certain silences are vast, not by measurable distance but by the weight of what they contain. Shelves of dark stone rose along every curved wall, and upon them rested objects of every conceivable material and form, bound manuscripts whose covers breathed slowly, vessels of clouded glass that held liquids moving against their own surfaces, instruments of no recognizable purpose whose components shifted and reconfigured in the periphery of vision but held perfectly still when looked upon directly.

At the chamber's center stood a single plinth of pale stone, and upon it rested nothing at all. The emptiness above the plinth was deliberate, the kind of emptiness that implies a recently vacated presence or a long-anticipated arrival. The light of the Lum did not reach here, yet the chamber was not dark. The illumination came from within the objects themselves, a collective slow exhale of accumulated magic, warm and sourceless and very old.

Expos stopped at the chamber's edge and did not enter further. Their eyes moved to the empty plinth, then to Zeshin, and they folded their hands in a posture that carried the particular stillness of one who has rehearsed a moment so many times that when it finally arrives, all they can do is witness it.

Expos: "The previous keeper left that empty. They said the plinth would know what belonged upon it when the right hands arrived to place it there. I confess I never learned what that meant. I suspect you will."

Zeshin moved toward the plinth with the careful tread of one crossing ground they do not yet fully trust. Up close, the pale stone was not featureless as it had first appeared. Fine lines traced its surface in patterns too deliberate for erosion and too irregular for craft, as though something had been written there in a language that used the stone itself as its medium rather than any substance laid upon it. The emptiness above the plinth pressed against the air in the same way that a held breath presses against the chest, present and full despite containing nothing visible.

Zeshin's hands lifted without any obvious decision having been made. They hovered above the plinth's surface for several Lumends, and the fine lines beneath them brightened by the smallest degree, the way embers brighten when breath passes near them. Then Zeshin lowered their hands and held the empty air between their palms as one might hold water in a cupped grasp, and between them, slowly, something began to take shape. Not conjured from outside, but gathered from within, the way a long-held word finally becomes sound. It was small. Formless at first. Then less formless. The objects on every shelf around the chamber dimmed by a single degree, as though offering what little they could spare.

The shape between Zeshin's palms continued its slow resolution, neither hurrying nor faltering, with the particular patience of things that have always existed and are merely returning to visibility. It was, at last, a key. Not of any metal or material Zeshin had encountered in all their Cycles on the surface, but of something that behaved like crystallized intention, transparent in some lights and deeply opaque in others, warm against the skin and yet carrying an interior coldness the way deep stone carries the cold of depths no Lum-light has ever reached. The fine lines on the plinth's surface flared once, softly, and then settled into a steadier glow, as though recognizing what had been placed above them.

Expos exhaled. The sound was very small in the vast chamber, but it arrived with the weight of an enormous relief set down after an enormous distance. They did not move from the chamber's edge, nor did they speak immediately. Their dark eyes moved from the key to Zeshin's face and remained there, reading something in the set of jaw and steadiness of breath that seemed to satisfy a question they had carried for many Cycles without knowing its precise shape.

Expos: "The previous keeper told me, near the end of their vigil, that the plinth would ask something of whoever stood before it. Not a price, they were careful to say. More the way a door asks for a key. I did not understand then. I think, watching you just now, I understand a little better. You did not bring that from elsewhere, Zeshin. You shaped it from what you already were."

Zeshin closed their fingers around the key. It did not resist. It settled into the grip with the ease of something that had been waiting in precisely that shape for precisely that hand, and the cold at its core spread slowly up through palm and wrist and arm, not unpleasant, the way deep stone is not unpleasant when one has learned to read it rather than merely endure it. The shelves around the chamber breathed back to their former brightness by degrees, and the plinth's fine-line script dimmed to its previous quiet suggestion of meaning.

Zeshin turned to look at Expos across the length of the chamber, the key held loosely at their side. The question that formed on their face was not one that required Lumins to compose. It was old and plain and had been asked in some form by every person who had ever stood at the threshold of something they did not ask for and could not refuse.

Zeshin: "And what does the door open?"

Expos was quiet for a long moment. Not the quiet of one who does not know the answer, but the quiet of one who has known the answer for so long that speaking it aloud requires a particular care, the way one handles a vessel whose contents have settled over many Cycles and must not be disturbed by haste. They moved at last, crossing the chamber floor with slow and measured steps until they stood at the plinth's edge, close enough that the residual glow of the fine-line script cast pale light across their dark features. Their eyes did not go to the key. They remained on Zeshin's face.

Expos: "Every keeper before you has asked that question. Every one of them, without exception. And every one of them received the same answer, which is this: the door opens onto whatever has been locked away longest. Not hidden by enemies. Not sealed by accident. Locked by the self, because it was too large to carry into ordinary rooms. The tower does not grant power, Zeshin. It grants return. What you shaped just now from your own substance was the proof that something within you has been waiting to come back to you for a very long time. The key knows the door because the key and the door were made from the same thing, by the same hands, in the same moment, which is to say: you."

The key shifted in Zeshin's grip, not violently, not with any urgency, but with the slow and certain movement of a compass needle finding north after long confusion. It rotated once within the closed fist, and where it pointed, the far wall of the chamber responded. A seam appeared in the stone there, fine as a hair at first, then widening by degrees, tracing the outline of an aperture that had no visible mechanism and no handle, only the seam itself and, at its center, a depression whose shape corresponded precisely to the key's irregular profile. The objects on the shelves nearest that wall fell utterly still, as though holding themselves at attention.

Zeshin did not move toward it immediately. They stood with the key at their side and their eyes on the seam and their breathing slow and deliberate in the manner of one who has learned, through long practice, that the first impulse toward a threshold is rarely the wisest one. The cold at the key's core had reached the shoulder now, and it was changing quality, becoming less the cold of deep stone and more the cold of open distance, of expanses so vast that warmth has not yet found them. Lum's light, even refracted and ancient as it arrived here, did not touch the seam in the far wall. That narrow opening held its own quality of darkness, not empty, not threatening, but withheld, the way a long-kept confidence is withheld, full of weight and patient with the waiting.

Expos remained at the plinth's edge and did not speak. There was nothing in their posture of urging or restraint. They had the quality of a person who has arrived at the end of their portion of a very old story and stands quietly at that ending, neither grieving it nor hastening it, simply present for the moment when what comes next begins to belong entirely to someone else.

Zeshin crossed the chamber toward the seam in the far wall. Each step felt heavier than the last, not with the weight of reluctance, but with the weight of accumulation, as though the chamber itself were pressing the sum of all its Cycles into the soles of Zeshin's feet with every stride, asking without words whether those feet were ready to carry such a reckoning. The objects on the shelves did not stir. The shadows between them lay still and attentive. Only the seam moved, breathing its faint darkness outward in slow pulses that matched no rhythm Zeshin could name.

At the wall, Zeshin raised the key. The depression at the seam's center received it with a stillness that was almost courteous, as if it had been expecting this moment with the particular composure of something that has never doubted it would come. The cold at the key's core discharged all at once into the stone, not violently, but with the completeness of a long-held breath finally released. The fine lines etched across the plinth behind them flared once more across the entire chamber, every carved surface in the room illuminating briefly in concert, and then the seam widened into an opening, and beyond it was neither darkness nor light but a quality of both that had no name in the surface tongues Zeshin knew.

Expos placed one hand flat against the plinth and bowed their head, a gesture brief and unwitnessed by Zeshin, who stood at the threshold with their back to the room. It was the gesture of one who has kept a promise made to someone no longer present to receive it, and it carried in its small economy of motion the full length of all the Cycles that had passed between the making and the keeping.

Beyond the threshold, the quality of neither-dark-nor-light resolved itself slowly, the way eyes adjust not to brightness or shadow but to something the senses have no prior architecture for receiving. The space beyond was not a room. It was not a corridor. It was an interval, the kind that exists between one thing ending and another beginning, given physical form and made habitable by some intelligence that understood such transitions require their own geography. The cold that had traveled up through Zeshin's arm was gone now, drawn back into the key, which itself had gone quiet in the hand, its work complete and its nature returned to patient waiting.

Zeshin stood at the interval's edge and did not cross it further. From behind, the chamber breathed its slow collective breath, and from ahead came no sound at all, only the pressure of an attention so vast and so unhurried that it registered not as presence but as the sudden awareness of having been always observed. Zeshin's fingers tightened once around the key, then loosened. On the far side of the interval, at a distance that could not be measured by any unit of surface reckoning, a single point of light burned with the steadiness of something that had never flickered and never would.

Expos lifted their head at last and looked toward the opening. Their expression carried nothing of surprise. It carried, instead, the particular quality of recognition that belongs to those who have heard a story told so many times that when they finally witness its events, the sight arrives less as revelation and more as confirmation of a truth already long residing in the bones.

Expos stepped to Zeshin's side at last, crossing the chamber floor with the unhurried ease of someone whose long vigil had prepared them for precisely this convergence of threshold and witness. They did not look at Zeshin. They looked at the single point of light burning in the interval's far reaches, and something in their face settled, the way a structure long braced against anticipated weight settles when the weight finally arrives and proves no greater than the bracing could bear.

Expos: "I should tell you, before you go further, that I never saw the light. In all my Cycles of vigil, I passed through every chamber in this tower, pressed my hands against every wall, read every impression left by every keeper who came before me. The interval opened for none of them while I watched. I had begun to believe the light was a thing only spoken of, a keeper's legend passed down to give the vigil meaning. I owe you an apology, Zeshin, and I owe the tower one as well."

Zeshin did not turn from the interval. But one hand moved, briefly, in a gesture that required no translation across any boundary of experience or custom, a small, open movement at the side, neither beckoning nor dismissing, simply acknowledging that the words had arrived and had been received. The point of light in the interval's depths pulsed once, slow and deep as a bell struck beneath stone, and the pulse traveled outward through the neither-dark-nor-light until it reached the threshold and passed through Zeshin and Expos alike, warm in the way that certainty is warm, without comfort precisely, but without coldness either.

The pulse did not fade when it passed through them. It continued outward, back through the chamber, and every impression left in the corridor walls beyond flared in answer, hand after hand after hand lighting up in sequence along the stone, a long procession of predecessors illuminated all at once and then released, each going dark in turn as the pulse traveled on until it reached the tower's outermost walls and the tower itself gave a sound that was less heard than felt, a low resonance that climbed through the soles of the feet and settled somewhere behind the sternum.

Zeshin turned from the interval then, not retreating from it, but turning with the deliberate movement of one who has taken the measure of a thing and means to return to it with greater preparation. The key rested still in their hand, no longer cold, no longer warm, simply present, the way a decision is present once it has been made and cannot be unmade. Zeshin's eyes moved across the chamber, reading the objects on the shelves as one reads the faces of a gathered crowd, not yet knowing which among them will prove significant, but noting each with the attention they may deserve.

Zeshin: "Tell me about the ones who came before. Not what they kept, not what they knew. Tell me what they could not carry out of the rooms they found here, and what they left behind in the stone instead."

Expos was still for a long time. Not the stillness of reluctance, but the stillness of one sorting through a great accumulation, the way an archivist does not hesitate from ignorance but from the sheer abundance of what must be ordered before a single piece can be offered cleanly. When they spoke, it was with the measured cadence of one who has learned that some things, spoken too quickly, arrive broken.

Expos: "There was a keeper, four before me, whose name the tower still will not render legible in the corridor impressions. Not erased. Simply held back, the way a wound holds back before it opens. This keeper found a chamber I have never found, and they spent what I reckon to be three full Cycles within it. When they emerged they walked the halls for a long span without speaking to anyone, though there were others here at that time. What they had seen they could not translate into any surface language, and so they pressed it instead into the walls of every room they passed through, layer upon layer of impressions that were not hands but something else, shapes that do not correspond to any part of the body I can identify. They are still there, beneath the handprints. If you press your palm flat in the older corridors and hold it very still, you can feel them underneath, and they feel like grief of a kind that has no cause you can name, only weight."

The objects on the shelves nearest the interval had resumed their slow configurations, components shifting and resettling with the patient industry of things that work whether or not they are observed. One vessel of clouded glass had turned itself to face the threshold, its interior liquid moving now in a direction counter to its previous current, and where it pressed against the glass, the surface of the vessel fogged and cleared in slow alternation, as though something within was attempting, by degrees, to make itself seen.

Zeshin moved toward the vessel with the careful, unhurried approach of one practiced long with things that reward patience over urgency. Up close, the fogging and clearing resolved into something more deliberate than it had appeared from across the chamber. Each time the glass cleared, a shape pressed briefly against the interior surface, not a face, not a hand, but an impression of a hand's negative, the void a hand leaves rather than the hand itself, as though whatever moved within the vessel had learned the concept of reaching but had not yet learned the substance. Then the fog would return and the shape would dissolve, and the whole cycle would begin again with the unhurried repetition of something that has been attempting this same communication for longer than Zeshin had been alive.

Zeshin did not touch the vessel. They stood with the key loose at their side and watched the cycle complete itself twice more, and on the third clearing they leaned close enough that their breath touched the glass and added a second layer of fog to the vessel's own. Where their breath met the vessel's surface, the shape inside stilled entirely. The liquid stopped its counter-current motion. The fog held without clearing. Then, from within that held stillness, a single line traced itself against the glass, thin and deliberate, beginning at the center and moving outward in a slow arc that stopped just short of completing a circle. Zeshin straightened. The line remained.

Expos had not approached, but their eyes were on the vessel from across the chamber, and the quality of their stillness had changed by a degree that required no announcement. Every object in this chamber had been subject to their vigil through Cycle upon Cycle, and no line such as that had ever appeared in the glass before. Their hands, folded at their front with their characteristic composure, tightened once against each other and then released.

No. 2 kneeled on a stump three Lu in diameter. Their lumite armor, typically a pristine white void of color, now bore a deep green hue from the plant life that had taken root on its surface, thriving off the passive energy of the complete set. The stump had benches carved from its bark, upon which two richly clothed people sat conversing. A city had developed around them while they awaited in a meditative state of non-existence. They rose to pray, having remained still for a fleeting Lumin.

The enormous person shot upward, standing at a full height of two Lu. Vines of ivy fell to the ground as they moved. The two bourgeois people before them jumped back, each letting out a gasp. The bustling trading hub reacted in waves: some stopped and watched, some turned and ran, and some, peculiarly, began to walk toward the statuesque No. 2, talismans in hand and voices lifting in gentle prayer.

No. 2 raised their arms to the sky and prayed, marking Lumora Cycle 4,162,500.

No. 2: "O Great Author, who pens the parchment of this world with precision, who determined the Lumspan and set the Cycles in motion, hear my words. I am Your instrument in this story, a sword within the eternal pages of Intearth. Grant me the wisdom to walk the path You have written, and the strength to turn the pages yet unseen."

They lowered their head to look at the gathering crowd.

No. 2: "Written favorably are those who walk through these texts with humility, that their deeds may be preserved in the eternal pages of Intearth. Written are those who mourn; their chapters shall end, and they shall find eternal comfort and rest thereafter. Written are the meek; for it is for them that Intearth is chronicled."

Before No. 2 could continue, a voice rang out from the audience. One of the richly clothed people, whose robe shimmered with intricate embroidery, stood and scoffed.

Lord Veyren: "Enough of this drivel! You speak of meekness, mourning, and humility, yet look around you! I am clothed in finery, my coffers overflowing, and I have knelt to no Author, bowed to no Cycle. Where is your so-called reward? If such virtues are written into your precious Text, then why does power and wealth favor the proud?"

The person laughed, loud and sharp, a sound that rippled through the crowd like a stone cast into a still pond. Several others chuckled nervously, glancing between the speaker and the giant in lumite armor standing before them.

No. 2: "Who are you, that you would blaspheme against the Author? Speak aloud your name, that it might be known. Tell me was it for you alone that the Author has stirred me from my slumber to bring judgment? Have I been awoken to cleanse this whole land of its sin?"

The person straightened their shoulders, as if the weight of their embroidered robes alone proved their worth.

Lord Veyren: "I am Lord Veyren, a citizen of this country and a member of the Verdant Council! These lands thrive thanks to our judgment and how we choose to spend our coin! Your Author may satisfy the prayers of the poor and the market folk, but it is the Council that decided to build the roads and buildings you see around you."

Veyren laughed, emboldened by the soldiers gathering in the town center, equipped with swords, staffs, bows, and all manner of weapons.

Lord Veyren: "I do not know what you are or what power you hold, but your god is a relic, a story told to children! I stand here, empowered by the will of Verdance, by the will of civilization itself!"

At a sharp gesture from the lord, some soldiers cast their spells, weaving enchantments into Veyren. Energy flared. Veyren rose into the air, growing in size, their flesh hardening into a living carapace of polished steel. Their once-fine robes burned away, leaving them draped in raw sorcery.

Lord Veyren: "Look upon me and see where true power dwells! Kneel, before the will of peoplekind!"

Around them, people gasped, some shielding their eyes from the harsh glow of the spellwork. Others whispered prayers, staying true to their faith and recognizing the divinity of No. 2, who did not stir. No. 2 remained like a mountain unmoved by storms, their gaze steady, the mark of the Author etched into every fiber of their being. No. 2 looked upon Lord Veyren, and the corners of their mouth turned downward, their brow furrowing deeply.

Slowly, No. 2 raised their arms to the sky. Their voice, when it came, was quiet and strained:

No. 2: "O Great Author, who set this Cycle in motion, who wrote each character with care and burden alike, forgive this one their folly, though judgment must fall. Have mercy upon the ink of Your own pen. For they are blind by Your hand, and I strike by Your command."

The crowd fell silent, a stillness heavier than any chant or clash of arms. For a moment, it seemed as if even the Wakes themselves paused, as if the very fabric of Intearth waited to hear the Author's answer. No. 2 lowered their hands, their body braced. No. 2 moved.

There was no warning cry, no battle roar, only a blur of motion as they crossed the square in a single, tremendous leap. Their great blade, mounted at their hip for swift use, flashed from its sheath in a single smooth motion, cutting the air with a sound like tearing parchment. In one brutal stroke, they cleaved Lord Veyren cleanly in half. The lord let out a wet gurgling gasp. Blood burst outward, painting the polished stones of the square and splattering those unfortunate enough to be standing near.

The soldiers, wide-eyed but disciplined, began to fall back, shields raised and weapons tight in their grasps. They retreated in formation, their captains barking sharp commands over the stunned murmuring of the crowd. Their boots pounded against the stone as they withdrew toward the north gate, where the castle loomed beyond the city wall. There, they would regroup and prepare to defend their stronghold against what they now knew was not merely a person, but something far older, far more of a threat.

No. 2 lowered their blade, their hands steady. They stood still amid the ruin, the body of Veyren laid unceremoniously at their feet, making even more of a splatter than the original cut. They bowed their head.

No. 2: "Forgive me fellow, for I was written to end your story as you were written to serve as my introduction here."

Around him, chaos unfolded. Those who had held faith in the Author fell to their knees, bowing low, weeping prayers into the blood-slick stones. Their voices, though jumbled and desperate, rose upward across the vaulted world of Intearth itself, toward the mirrored lands above, and to Lum, the living light between. Others who had scorned the old ways fled in all directions, desperate to escape meeting a similar judgment to that they had just witnessed. Among them, people of every kind scattered No. 2 raised his voice to the gathered peoples of Intearth, them still faithful to the Author.

No. 2: "Beware, The Old Ones have returned. They once again seek to escape the confines of our story. When I wake, it is by the will of the Author. The Author's hand stirs me from Leep, summoning me to prepare the Faithful of Intearth.

Look for the signs: when a shadow is cast upon Lum, when the waters freeze over, when forgotten things rise from the soil, and when the winds whisper of ancient names. All is not lost, and not all of the ancients awake. The eternal egg still incubates in its orbit around Lum. The Author has blessed us at this time, for when it hatches, even I will not be able to mitigate much of the destruction. The names of the Ancients are on the tongues of the unfaithful. In those moments, help your fellow Intearthians, and the Author will view favorably any who provide Intearthian aid. Our trials have been foretold, and our purpose awaits."

A furry bipedal person approached the area where No. 2 was giving the speech. They had not been in the square during the previous events and had just arrived for the warnings.

Council Person Vissira: "How can you expect us to be faithful to a God not even willing to prove they exist? I am sure your power is impressive and your magic old and abundant, but it is far more likely that you, like many others, have fallen victim to the sickness of magic. The words you speak are of that illness and have no more truth or evidence than any other words of anyone here. If the Author were real, we would only exist when the Author was writing about us. All our lives leading up to the moments that we would appear in their pages would be left up to imagination. Assuming the Author even writes in a book. Who knows what a God would use for the passing of knowledge and information. We would have no free will. Everything we chose to do would be directly chosen by the Author."

No. 2: "I will provide proof that I am no mere prophet. I am No. 2 the right hand of the author himself. I enact the will of the pen. First I must ask, what are you, that you have these tall pointy ears on top of your head, and a bipedal model of a human?"

Council Person Vissira: "I was made this way when I still resided in my bubble. My creator dedicated 30 Cycles to my creation, which is what has set me so far above all these other citizens here before you. I was made, and my creator is tangible. They raised me and they made me do what I was made to do very well, which has caused me immense success in life and improved and held our community. I am a council member here, and my name is Vissira."

No. 2: "Very well, Council Person Vissira. What would you have me do to prove the Author's existence?"

Council Person Vissira: "Well, therein lies the problem. There is so much that magic can do. Whatever your Author needs to do as a miracle has to be astronomically impressive. So if the Author is real, have them darken Lum. Surely Lum is one of the ancients you speak of, and it is not returning it has been here the whole time, always providing light to the world of Intearth. Those of us who dwell on the surface, that is."

No. 2: "This is acceptable."

No. 2 began to rise into the air as if pulled by their chest. Their head hung back, their arms limp at their side, their legs limp and dangling. Their sword remained sheathed, their armor now clear of any of the growth that had covered them. They whispered incoherent sentences, pausing for twelve Lumends between each one. The questioner stood with arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, the corner of their mouth curled upward. They had gone as far as to summon a small clown bird, which flew in circles around No. 2. Members of the crowd looked down, interacting with invisible displays and laughing. An elephant-trunked person who stood twice as tall as many of the other members of the crowd spoke to an invisible audience, framing themselves in front with No. 2 and Lum behind.

The Communication Network: *Users commenting about No. 2, Lum, etc.*

Then the unthinkable happened. Lum itself darkened.

Great avian people, their feathered bodies clothed in armor and sashes, took to the sky in panicked flocks.

Slender, scaled people with serpent-like bodies slithered into alleyways.

Hooved people leapt over merchant carts in their haste to get away.

Magic users vanished into thin air.

The square emptied like a breached dam, leaving only the bowed faithful and the looming figure of No. 2 a silent monument to the weight of divine will.

Council Person Vissira remained motionless in the center of the abandoned square, their fur standing on end as they stared upward at the darkened Lum. Their arms had fallen to their sides, the mocking expression wiped clean from their features. Around them, the faithful pressed their faces to the bloodstained stones, their whispered prayers now carrying a desperate urgency that had been absent before.

No. 2 descended slowly, their boots touching the ground with deliberate precision. They turned their gaze toward Vissira, who stood frozen like a statue carved from living doubt. The darkness above began to recede, Lum's light returning in gradual waves that cast shifting shadows across the empty merchant stalls and abandoned weapon racks.

Vissira's voice, when it finally came, was barely above a whisper.

Council Person Vissira: "How... how long will it remain dark?"

Their ears twitched as the first rays of returning light caught the edges of their council robes, now wrinkled and disheveled from the chaos.

No. 2: "The Author's pen writes what it will. The darkness serves its purpose, to demonstrate that even Lum itself bends to the will of the one who conceived this Spherve and all who dwell upon it."

Vissira's legs trembled, and they sank to one knee upon the bloodstained stones. Around the square's edges, shuttered windows began to crack open as curious eyes peered out at the scene. The faithful who had remained prostrate slowly raised their heads, their faces streaked with tears and wonder. In the distance, the sound of heavy boots echoed from the direction of the castle as soldiers regrouped, their captains' voices carrying sharp commands through the returning light.

A child emerged from behind an overturned cart, their small form trembling as they approached the kneeling council member. The child's bare feet left tiny prints in the settling dust as they reached out with one hesitant hand toward Vissira's furred shoulder.

Child: "Council Person... are we going to be safe now?"

Vissira's ears drooped as they looked down at the child, their mouth opening and closing without sound. No. 2 observed this exchange in silence, their massive frame casting a long shadow across both the questioning child and the humbled council member. More faces appeared in doorways and windows, all looking toward the square for answers, as Vissira stood silent and still.

The silence stretched between them like a taut bowstring until Vissira slowly reached into their council robes and withdrew a small crystalline pendant that had hung around their neck for countless Cycles. The pendant, crafted from transmuted amber and inscribed with the mathematical formulae that governed their city's trade routes, seemed suddenly insignificant in their trembling palm. With deliberate movements, Vissira placed the symbol of their earthly authority upon the bloodstained stones before No. 2's feet.

Vissira: "I have spent forty-seven Cycles believing that knowledge and reason were the highest powers in this Spherve. I calculated the trajectories of merchant caravans, measured the flow of coin through our markets, and thought myself wise because I could predict the patterns of ordinary magic. But you have shown me that there are forces beyond measurement, beyond the reach of any council's authority."

Vissira's voice cracked as they spoke, ears folding back against their skull.

From the castle walls came the distant sound of war horns, their deep notes rolling across the city like thunder. The soldiers were regrouping, but their calls now carried an undertone of uncertainty that had not been present before the darkening of Lum. Several of the faithful who had remained in the square began to form a protective circle around the child, their voices joining in a low, harmonious chant that seemed to resonate with the very stones beneath their feet.

No. 2 knelt beside the fallen pendant, their massive gauntlets carefully lifting the crystalline symbol from the bloodstained stones. As their fingers closed around the amber surface, the mathematical inscriptions began to glow with a soft golden light that pulsed in rhythm with the returning brightness of Lum above. The formulas that had once governed trade routes and market flows now rearranged themselves across the crystal's surface, forming new patterns that spoke of deeper truths: the orbital paths of ancient powers, the calculated movements of sleeping things, and the precise timing of prophesied awakenings.

Vissira watched with widening eyes as their life's work transformed before them, no longer mere calculations of earthly commerce but fragments of a greater equation that encompassed the very structure of Intearth itself. The pendant grew warm in No. 2's grasp, then began to emit a gentle chiming sound that harmonized with the faithful's chant and seemed to answer the distant war horns from the castle walls.

As the transformed pendant continued its ethereal song, the bloodstained stones beneath their feet began to resonate in response. The crimson stains left by Lord Veyren's death started to shift and flow, not spreading outward but drawing inward toward the center where No. 2 knelt. The blood formed intricate geometric patterns around the crystalline pendant, creating a mandala of prophecy that pulsed with each chime. The faithful's chant grew stronger as they witnessed this sign, their voices weaving together into harmonies that had not been heard since the ancient Cycles when the Author's hand was said to move more directly through the world.

Vissira's tail, previously tucked between their legs in submission, began to bristle as the vibrations rose through the soles of their feet. Far beneath the market squares and council chambers, in caverns that had been sealed since the founding of their settlement, ancient mechanisms were awakening. The vibrations traveled upward through layers of stone and earth, carrying with them the scent of oiled metal and the whisper of gears that had waited millennia to turn. Whatever the darkening of Lum had awakened, it was not confined to the surface world alone.

From the nearest alley mouth, a figure emerged at a cautious pace: a robed person whose skin bore the pale, almost translucent quality of one who had spent many Cycles in the subterranean passages beneath the city. Their eyes, wide and colorless as quartz, swept across the transformed square with the practiced attention of a recorder or chronicler. Beneath one arm they clutched a bound collection of pressed hides, and their free hand moved in small, rapid strokes with a stylus, setting down what they witnessed with the urgency of someone who understood that such moments, left unrecorded, are swallowed whole by time.

Vissira noticed the figure and rose from one knee, their voice steadied by visible effort.

Vissira: "Archivist Quelm. You will write all of this."

The archivist did not look up from the page.

Archivist Quelm: "I have not stopped writing since Lum went dark. There are already three copies begun in separate locations, should this one be lost."

No. 2 turned their gaze toward the archivist. Their expression held neither surprise nor displeasure, only the patient recognition of one who has seen this same instinct play out across uncountable Cycles: the mortal impulse to name what has happened, to press it into material form before it can dissolve back into the unnamed. The war horns from the castle sounded again, closer now, and the faithful in their ring around the child drew tighter together, their chant unbroken.

Through the northern gate, the first column of castle soldiers rounded the corner into the square at a measured march, their captains holding formation with the rigid discipline of those who had decided that order itself was the only answer to what they had witnessed. They numbered perhaps four dozen, their armor bearing the Verdant Council's crest, their weapons drawn but held low. They halted at the square's edge. Their captain, a broad figure whose face bore the deep-set creases of long service, surveyed what remained: the bloodstained mandala still pulsing at the center, the faithful and their child, the recording archivist, the humbled council member upon one knee, and No. 2 standing over all of it with the amber pendant chiming softly in their grasp. The captain's sword hand did not rise.

The captain took three steps forward, alone, and stopped.

Captain Ordas: "Lord Veyren appointed us to defend this city. Lord Veyren is gone. The Council Charter requires that in the absence of a sitting lord, defense of the city falls to the next ranking council authority present."
The captain's gaze moved from the pendant in No. 2's hand to Vissira, still kneeling upon the stones.
Captain Ordas: "Council Person Vissira. You are that authority. We await your word."

Vissira lifted their head. Their ears rose slowly, trembling at the tips. The child beside them reached up and took hold of a fold of their council robe with two small hands, and Vissira looked down at the child for a long Lumin before looking back toward the captain and the soldiers arrayed behind them.

Vissira rose to their full height. The pendant's chiming continued from No. 2's grasp, soft and persistent as a conscience. For a span of several Lumends, the only sounds in the square were that ringing, the distant settling of displaced stone from somewhere deep beneath the city, and the quiet breathing of four dozen soldiers waiting to be told what to believe.

Vissira: "Stand down your weapons, Captain Ordas. All of you. What you witnessed today was not a threat to this city. It was a demonstration made for my benefit, and I was the one who demanded it. Whatever comes next, it will not be decided at sword point."

The captain studied Vissira's face for a long moment, then turned and raised a fist. Along the line of soldiers, weapons were lowered one by one, the scrape of steel against stone giving way to silence. Ordas kept their own blade drawn but tilted it downward, point toward the earth, in a posture that was neither surrender nor challenge. Archivist Quelm's stylus moved without pause across the pressed hide, capturing the precise geometry of who stood where and what their hands were doing, because Quelm understood, as all archivists must, that the arrangement of bodies in a moment of decision is itself a form of language.

The deep settling of stone from beneath the city came again, louder this time, and accompanied by a fine sifting of dust that fell from the edges of the surrounding buildings like pale snow. Several of the faithful pressed their palms flat against the ground, and one among them, an older figure whose robes bore the worn patches of long pilgrimage, lifted their face and spoke in a tone of quiet alarm.

Faithful Pilgrim: "The vibrations are not random. They come in intervals of twelve. Listen."

The square fell into a hush, and those who remained counted in silence. Twelve Lumends of stillness, then the low tremor moving upward through stone and boot sole alike. Twelve again. Then again. Archivist Quelm's stylus paused for the first time since Lum had gone dark. Quelm pressed one hand flat against the paving stone, then lifted it and examined the palm as though the stone had written something there. Captain Ordas shifted their weight and looked toward No. 2, whose gaze had already moved downward, fixed upon the ground beneath the mandala of blood and light, the expression on their great face carrying the still, measured quality of someone who has heard this particular rhythm before, in some other city, in some other Cycle, long before the current age had a name.

No. 2 knelt, pressing one gauntleted hand flat against the paving stones as the faithful pilgrim had done, though where the pilgrim had lifted their palm and looked at it with uncertainty, No. 2 held the contact. The mandala of blood and light around them pulsed once in full, a single slow breath of illumination that spread outward to the very edges of the square, then drew back inward again. The pendant in No. 2's other hand went still and silent for the first time since the transformation, its chiming cut off as cleanly as a candle flame pinched between two fingers.

No. 2: "This rhythm is not the city settling. Something beneath has counted the Waepes since it was sealed, and the darkening of Lum has told it that its count is complete."

Archivist Quelm's stylus resumed its movement across the pressed hide, faster now. Captain Ordas took two steps backward without being told to, an instinct older than military discipline asserting itself through the soles of their boots. Vissira's hand moved to the child at their side and drew the small figure close without looking down, eyes fixed instead upon the center of the square where a hairline fracture had appeared in the paving stone directly beneath No. 2's kneeling form, running in a perfectly straight line from one edge of the mandala to the other, as though something on the far side of the stone had drawn it with a stylus of its own.

The fracture widened by no more than a Lumecimal, yet from within it came a breath of air that had not moved in a very long time. It carried the smell of deep places: cold mineral, the faint bitterness of metals older than the city above them, and something beneath both that had no name in any tongue spoken on the current surface of Intearth. The faithful pilgrim pressed their forehead against the ground and did not lift it. Several of the soldiers behind Captain Ordas took the same two steps backward their captain had taken, without being ordered and without shame.

Vissira looked down at the child still clutching their robe, then lifted the child with both arms and carried them to the nearest soldier, pressing the small figure firmly into the soldier's arms with an expression that left no room for argument. Vissira returned to the edge of the mandala and stood there with their feet together and their ears flat, watching the fracture and saying nothing. The archivist Quelm had moved to stand behind a stone pillar at the square's edge, though the stylus continued to move across the pressed hide, the hand and its instrument extended just past the pillar's edge while the rest of Quelm remained behind it.

The twelfth interval came and passed, and this time the tremor beneath it was strong enough to shift the abandoned merchant carts at the square's perimeter by a finger's width. The fracture in the paving stone did not widen further. Instead, the hairline split began to glow along its full length with the same deep amber light that Lum cast on its most unhurried Wakes, except that this light came from below, rising upward through solid stone as water rises through cloth, and it pulsed not in twelves but in a rhythm that matched nothing the living beings in that square had witnessed before. No. 2 remained kneeling, gauntleted hand still flat upon the stone, their great head bowed, and those close enough to observe them would have seen that the knuckles of that gauntlet had pressed deep into the paving, leaving the impression of armored fingers in what had been solid stone a Lumin before.

The wake began like any other for Sam, he woke up in the barn he had begun to call home, Sam got out of his hammock by throwing one leg over the right side of it then rolled landing on the floor and rudely awakening the nearby cat that had been sleeping on his stomach. Slowly raising his rear end and outstretching his forelimbs out in front of him then arching his back Sam stretched like a cat. The cat whose name was Tom skipped his own usual stretch, as he was more interested in a scratching noise coming from the corner of the barn. Sam stood up and made his way to the ladder and climbed down to the ground floor. Tom followed behind quickly with a small mouse in his mouth. Sam pet Bessie the horse on the nose, she was an old mare that was unusually fat for a horse she almost looked like she was carrying a bubble child all the time, though she was far too old to have a foal.

Sam had been living on the Colt Farm for two cycles, Farmer Colt owned five thousand luminares of land and let Sam and others live on the farm in exchange for work. Sam primarily worked on making a road that was intended to span the whole farm. This wake though he decided he would take the wake off and gather apples. Farmer Colt of course believed this was the only life you got and if those boys who worked for him wanted to enjoy a little bit of it then by all means they should, though when the time came everyone ought to do their share of the work. This method of management was why farmer Colt had been so successful. He was one of the largest landowners in his county. Sam had arrived at the apple trees with a burlap sack. He began to climb the largest tree at the head of the orchard when an apple the size of his head pegged him in the face.

Disembodied Voice: "Gotcha sucker." *playful laughter*

Sam fell from the tree and landed on his butt.

Sam: "Ed I am going to climb up that tree and knock you from your perch."

Ed: "I would like to see you try."

With that the trial had begun Sam making a quick pace up the massive tree and Ed throwing a barrage of oversized apples. A few made contact with Sam but knowing they were coming he was able to brace on to the tree to hold himself up. As he approached the branch Ed had been sitting on Ed panicked and decided to jump to avoid being thrown off. He had a rough landing and got a few scrapes and bruises but otherwise he was mostly unharmed. Sam, rather satisfied with himself, collected five apples filling his bag and made his way back down to the base of the tree.

Ed: "Are you leaving the farm too then Sam?"

Sam: "No I was just in the mood for some apples, why? Are you leaving?"

Ed: "I guess you haven't heard, considering you are on the farthest border of farmer Colts land though I would have thought he'd have sent someone down to let you know."

Sam stomped forward and fixed Ed with a hard stare.

Sam: "Out with it Ed you buffoon."

Ed: "A plague has fallen on the land the county has gone to war with three of our neighbors in a fight for food. It's a free for all, martial law has been declared and everyone is either running towards the fighting or running away from it but you can bet no one is staying where they are."

Sam paused for a moment to take it all in. He did not like the sound of any of that at all. But he would have no choice but to make a decision.

Sam: "Ed what are you going to do?"

Ed lowered his voice and his shoulders eased.

Ed: "Well I am going to paradise of course."

Sam: "What? We already live in Paradise."

Ed: "Not the county! The actual real paradise like the concept, travelers have spoke of the county to the South, there have been strange going ons but word is there was a wizard war and the winning side made a place with unlimited water, food, and no one has to work I guess the wizards all study or research, it's hard to get entry but if you do get in your set for life."

Sam: "Well that sounds better than going to fight, mind if I tag along I make good company and I can hold my own in a battle with bandits."

Ed: "Course you can come you are free folk aren't you, master of your own fate I couldn't stop you if I tried."

Sam: "I asked if you mind not if I was capable, you have some gall trying to correct me with how dumb you are."

Ed *laughing*: "I'm the one with gaul? well at any rate I planned on eating my fill then leaving."

They both proclaimed aloud "let's eat!" and feasted on the savory apples. As leep drew near Tom arrived, and climbed the tree that Sam and Ed had settled in to rest for the leep. Tom had a bloated belly, he had eaten his fill of field mice. Tom climbed to the large branch Sam was resting on and laid in his lap. Sam pet Tom with his back leaned against the bark of the great arbor. Tom was a welcome companion. Sam spoke to his cat of his plans to travel with Ed and asked him to come along. Tom nodded almost as if in acknowledgement of what Sam said. They both faded to sleep.

Sam woke up to Ed stepping on his head in his descent of the tree. Tom had already departed from Sam's lap, probably off warring against the lesser powers of the farm. Ed apologized for stepping on Sam but it was about time he woke up anyway, they would leave soon so they both topped off their sacks with Humungo apples (the name the people of Paradise county called the enormous fruit).

After reaching the base of the tree Sam noticed tracks in the dirt just around the dirt near the building roots,

Sam: "Looks like a band of horse mounted soldiers or merchants came through while we were sleeping and they must have been in a hurry."

Ed: "Let's travel with haste then I don't want to find out what was chasing them."

The path was a somewhat well traveled one but it was not lined with brick or rocks. Sam had a momentary thought that he might build on this road like he had done so many of the others on Colts farm. It passed as quickly as it had come. A new journey was ahead of him and while he might have chosen better company if he could, he was stuck with Ed. Upon examination of the tracks Ed announced there were likely six riders.

After a moment of silence from each of them Ed said "let's follow the tracks and see if we can gather more information on the party but keep your distance."

They began their journey following the exact path of the group ahead of them to give some semblance of hiding their own tracks. Sam thought on the fact that it was the perfect wake to start an adventure. Lum was bright in the sky and it looked like it would be a clear wake. The birds had begun their morning gathering of worms, bugs and berries. It was very peaceful. The two of them were well rested sleeping in the sticks was not at all uncommon for them and they both were as ready as they would ever be. The idea of the horsemen having been in a hurry became abundantly clear as the horsemen had left small trails of blood from where their spurs struck the horses and left a periodic trickle of blood.

After a few Lumers of silent travel between the two companions a small noise could be heard in the direction they were going. As they came closer Sam thought the noise sounded foreign unlike anything he could fully comprehend. Sam was an avid practitioner of the saying curiosity killed the cat, he of course was unaware of the second part of the saying "satisfaction brought it back."

Sam: "I don't really care to find out what that noise is."

Ed was the curious sort and wild images ran through his mind as to what fiendish thing could make such a sound.

Ed: "Whatever it is I have to see it, but you needn't worry I will observe from a safe distance."

Sam walked a short way off the path and hid in a large fairly inconspicuous looking bush.

Sam: "Well I will wait here, but not for very long so you had better make it quick."

Ed took off ahead traveling along the brush just off the road, so he would not be easily visible to the thing making the awful noise which seemed to be getting louder but he was sure it was just because he was getting closer. Once he was within viewing distance he gazed upon an old person rolling around in a mixture of mud and blood. The person was yelling in two voices, one of an older person and that other worldly, screeching noise. Ed watched for a Lumin and decided someone ought to help the man, and no one else was around so it would have to be him.

He slowly got out of the bush he had been hiding in, he took each very careful step as slowly as he could. He was only a few Lu from the writhing old person when he tripped on some invisible thing then fell into an invisible wet puddle of liquid. It was not the mud that was clinging to him as he lay for a moment but some unseen liquid. Ed wrinkled his nose at the scent of blood. He got on his hands and knees then noticed the noise had stopped. He brought his eyes to where the old person had been rolling. Now Ed saw a pair of feet, he raised his eyes following the feet to a pair of legs then a stomach, chest, neck, and stopping on the face of the old man. It was like no human expression he had ever seen, it was closer to a wolf's snarl. In place of eyes the old person had black pits. He was growling in the other worldly voice. Ed, now back on his feet, began to back away slowly. The old person raised his hand holding the open claw position and aiming at Ed's heart. Ed turned and ran back in Sam's direction. Ed could hear the old person beginning to chant

Old person *chanting*: "Eternal Dark, hear my call, if it is your will strike this child's heart and take what you desire."

The voice grew distant as Ed got farther away, Sam popped out of a bush he had been hiding in.

Sam: "What did you do!?"

Ed: "Nothing, he just started chanting some weird stuff about eternal darkness."

Sam: "Who."

Sam looked back and saw an old person walking toward them with a goofy smile on his face. Though he had heard the chanting from that weird voice it had stopped and only this old person to show for it.

Sam: "Ed it's only an old man."

Sam walked over to him.

Ed: "We need to run now!"

Sam walked over casually.

Sam: "Hello."

The old person gave an uninterested sweeping motion with his hand. Then a strong gust of wind picked Sam up and smashed him against a tree. Sam's back made contact first, he slid down the base then his butt hit the ground hard, he grunted and his eyes shut. Ed fell over on his butt as well only for him it was out of fear. He put both his hands up as if preparing to block any magic the old person could throw at him. Instead the eldritch voice once again began chanting.

Eldritch Voice: "Eternal Dark, you will hear my call! You will consume the one laying before me. I offer The Stone Of Abandon as offering to take the one before me I command it!"

The old person repeated this line as he pulled a purple stone out of a small bag attached to his waist. He raised the stone to the sky and an ominous tempest gathered from all sides leaving the eye of the storm directly above the trio. Ed was paralyzed with fear unsure of what to do even if he could bring himself to move. Lightning bolts began to strike the ground all around Ed, he brought his knees to his chest and buried his face in them bracing for what he feared would be his death. Ed's jaw tightened and his brow creased as he hunched small against the ground. Then the chanting came to a complete halt and a awful noise but one Ed could comprehend, furios screeching and yowling came from the direction of the old man, Ed raised his head and could see Tom tearing into the old man's face, apparently he had no passive defensive magic because Tom was quickly covered in blood, the pair of them were hissing, screeching, and yowling together now. The old person tried to rip Tom off his face but the cat had a firm grip and held tight. The tempest retreated, leaving the sky blue and Lum shining. To Ed's surprise the old person began walking backwards and tripped on a large rock behind him. He fell and hit his head on a much larger rock. His eyes shut and he fell unconscious.

Ed sat for a Lumin to take in all that had happened. Ed carried the bearing of the luckiest unlucky soul walking the surface. He ran over to Sam and put his hand over his mouth to see if he was still breathing. His breath was ragged but definitely there, the impact had done some internal damage, Ed was unsure of how much, he knew he would need to take Sam to a medicine person. Now that he confirmed Sam was still breathing it was time to deal with the old man. Tom was sitting next to the man's head. The cat was licking the blood from his paws in the typical feline fashion. Ed walked over and looked down at the man's face. He gasped in shock, the blood was gone and he didn't have a scratch on him. Ed had never met a wizard before. With his limited knowledge of magic folk he knew it must take a very powerful wizard to heal themselves while unconscious. Though all that was hearsay, could it maybe be possible that healing magic was easier than most folk had seemed to think?. The wizard was still breathing, Ed couldn't decide if that was good or bad. On one hand he had tried to kill them, on the other hand he was a living person and it wasn't Ed's place to take life. He took Sam's apples out of his sack. Placed the now empty sack over the wizard, removed the lace of his boots and tied the string around the wizards hands and feet. Ed did remember something about needing to use hand gestures in spells so that should do well enough for stopping his magic. Ed leaned the wizard up against the opposite side of the tree Sam was leaned up against.

Ed walked over to Tom and began petting him, after a few Lumins of this he scratched Ed on the forearm signifying the end of the petting he would tolerate. He decided now may be a good time to examine the contents of the bag on the wizard's waist. Tom walked off into the woods without a care in the world. Ed kneeled next to the unconscious wizard, he gripped either end of the relatively small bag and drew it open, it was too dark inside to see anything. Ed cautiously reached his left hand in the bag and gripped something soft but stiff. He pulled it out and it was a pair of leather shoes.

Just as soon as he had the shoes out of the bag he heard a noise coming from down the road in the direction they had come from that morning. He put the shoes in a satchel he wore around his right hip and dragged the wizard and Sam into a nearby bush to hide them from view. Ed rushed up the tree, climbing to a branch that blocked him from view of the road but allowed him to see out. A band of twelve horsemen came down the road at a galloping pace. Just as they hit the muddy section Ed and the wizard had fought in, their horses tripped on something, probably the same invisible thing that Ed himself fell victim to. The back four members of the twelve person group were able to stop in time but the other eight fell over each other and the horses quickly regained their footing and stepped just off the path close to where Sam and the wizard were hidden. Among the back four, one person rode a tan horse speckled with black spots. He was cloaked, his face obscured, wearing a backpack and holding a staff in his right hand.

He raised his staff.
Cloaked Figure: "Dispel."

A light flashed from the end of his staff, revealing the scene fully. Six horse and six mangled human bodies lay scattered across the ground, clad in red uniforms featuring chainmail at the joints and metal plates on broader surfaces. The newcomers wore similar attire but in yellow, distinguished by a different emblem. Whereas the uniforms of the deceased bore a sleeping raven symbol, those of the living featured a howling wolf.

Another of the back four, the apparent leader of the group, called something out to his men that Ed did not understand. They rapidly started getting on their horses. Ed was directly above one of the men getting on his horse. The man presented an opportune target, should fighting become unavoidable, yet the others would surely prove fatal to any lone aggressor. Judging by their garb they had four mages in the back, four archers ahead of them, two spear wielding warriors and two sword wielding warriors. You could tell the leadership of militias in the land by the colored pauldron on their right shoulder. High command typically wore gold and small group leaders wore silver. This one was wearing silver. The mage who used the spell called out to the other men shouting what sounded like an order in another language. The group continued down the path the direction they had already been heading, leaving behind the dead bodies.

Ed's hands trembled and his breath came in slow, steadying draws. This wake could have gone worse but it was shaping up to be one of the worst he had ever had. Ed worked on the Colt farm as a plow. He usually pushed an enchanted boulder buster in front of him and pulled a rake that divided the front row created by the boulder buster into six smaller rows. Others would later come and plant seeds in the furrows. He knew he had the strength to transport both bodies of Sam and the wizard. First he would need to make a gurney. Sam was the better craftsman of the two of them but Ed had spent enough time working with them to figure something out.

After some searching he was able to find two sticks that were straight and cylindrical enough to serve as an axel. Donut stones, ancient runes from some previous civilization were easy to find and came in standard sizes. They held no more magic but served well as wheels due to their unusual durability and shape, a circle with a hole in the center. Ed whittled the ends of each axel until they could almost fit through the center of the stones. Then forced the slightly oversized branch through the wheels getting them stuck on either end of the axel. For the platform the bodies would rest on he found vine leaves. They could be found on dying trees, like the trees the constricted they were enormous large enough to carry most adults. They also had vines that grew from one end to the other end of the leaf in random patterns. Normally the vine would go around the tree holding the leaves flat to the trunk or branch they were gripping. Due to the wild nature of the plant often you would get leaves that grew off other vines that did not touch any part of the tree but still had the looping vines beneath.

After some searching Ed found two leaves that had vine loops that were in the correct position for his need to wrap around the axel. He had to cut a wheel from each axel once he realized the vine loops were not large enough to go around them, then run the axel through the vine loops and attach a new wheel to the end of the axel. Ed wished Sam would wake up already. He did not like being called dumb by Sam but even he had to admit stupid mistakes like that wouldn't happen if Sam had been the one making the gurney's. Finally Sam took some vines without leaves and tied them to the opposite end of the leaf from the axel he was pulling, then around his shoulders so he could pull the Gurney. He placed Sam on this one. He found some straight branches and pierced them through the leaf he would be pushing. He placed the wizard on this one so he could keep an eye on him while they traveled.

*The species of Intearth do not produce bodily waste and have no need to go to the bathroom, all living creatures have some bit of magic inside them that helps their bodies digest all of whatever they consume. This is mostly an advantage over the waste methods of species from The Real Realm with one drawback. If a poison is consumed the body has no way of expelling it regurgitation is only known in a limited number of species and usually used as a weapon. For poison control magic is required or someone must consume another substance that alters the composition of the poison in the body.*

After around half the wake he was done crafting and ready to begin traveling again. He ate some of Sam's apples but his own sack of apples on the gurney with Sam then began carting the two down the same road the party had traveled earlier in the wake. By the time it was leep Tom had returned and laid upon Sam's chest who was still asleep. Ed put both of them down in the brush just off the path so they would be out of sight of any travelers. The land they were traveling to had a lower elevation and the further someone got the Lun the colder it was, Ed wanted a fire but thought better of it and went into a deep sleep as he always did after a hard wake of work.

*"Yum Bird" is a spherical animal that lacks appendages. "Bird" is used for any feathered creatures that fly in Intearth. In truth Yum Birds float, like most organisms their magic ability is highly specialized and serves the basic functions and the floating ability. The more magic the Yum Bird has the more robust and colorful their plumage. A Yum Bird completely out of magic has no feathers at all. To my knowledge essentially their only form of defense is to float out of reach of predators, They eat worms primarily and during the act of eating is usually when they are hunted.*

Ed awoke to the smell of breakfast being cooked. Sam was cooking disks of meat on a thin plate shaped strone [metal].

Ed: "Is that Yum Bird you cookin?"

Sam: "Sure is, we must be getting close to where that old witch lives, she was the one that set the birds loose on the land, or so says Jams."

Ed: "I didn't think it was safe to have a fire in case those soldiers came back or more came behind them."

Sam: "I thought the same at first, but go ahead and look around."

Ed took the half cooked piece of Yum Bird out of the pan with his bare hand and shoved it in his mouth.
Ed began to look around into the distance. There was a dark smog that surrounded them and made Lum look red.

Sam: "Those soldiers must be burning the town ahead, probably started a forest fire too."

Ed: "The whole county will be smoky for Spanths, did they really think that was going to help them find this guy?"

Sam: "The villagers probably did not cooperate with them, even if just saying no the wizard isn't here was enough to satisfy the soldiers, consider the general mental attitude of the people we know…"

Ed thought about it for a moment. The people Ed knew were stubborn to the core. The local culture was one of no snitches. If something got stolen and everyone but the sheriff saw it, not a soul would tell the sheriff. Ed knew the local culture was considered strange to most travelers. Often mishaps with neighboring counties would occur on communication problems alone. Colts farm was one of ten farms in the county and no one else could start a new one because of the stubborn farmers who refused to sell land. Regardless of potential gain in terms of money, it was standard practice to pass your land, possessions, servants down to your selected heir. The stubbornness of the locals would never let any of them break this tradition.

Ed: "I think know you mean, well I am glad we get to eat at least, did you try waking him up."

Sam: "I think he is going to need magical help to wake up, he stopped breathing at one point. He seemed peaceful when he was dead. But he began to glow red and his body jerked then he started breathing again. I think the noise he made is what woke you up."

Ed: "The county witch doesn't live too far from here, do you know the way?"

Sam: "Yea I finished a road from her castle to the North East corner of the farm a couple Cycles ago, she used to let me read the books in her library on my breaks. That's why I am so much smarter than you buddy."

Ed: "I guess the first thing to do is to get this guy some help then how long you think its going to take to get there."

Sam: "Its about a wakes travel from here if we set off soon we could get there before leep, I am not sure I want to help this guy though."

Ed: "How can you say that? The sick will always be helped in Paradise county, it says as much on the welcome sign at the south entrance."

Sam: "Remember I am not from here I just ended up here I'm not stubborn like you folk, I always thought that was stupid. People will get into a street brawl after a leep of drinking, then the guy that beat the other guy near to death takes him to the farm healer right after."

Ed: "You think its better to just leave them in the street to die then."

Sam: "If I was mad enough to beat someone near to death I have no interest in trying to get them help after."

Ed: "Well I am Paradise folk my family tree goes back to the first settlers here, We came from Lum that's why we have six toes and finger on each limb."

Sam: "You have six toes and fingers, cuz you are inbred, families ought not produce children together."

Ed: "There is no reason families cannot produce children together, they all share the soul, multiple siblings contribute some soul, they are just reuniting the pieces of the parent who split their souls to make the siblings in the first place."

Sam: "Have you ever heard of anywhere else where siblings produce children together?"

Ed: "Our people have been doing this from the beginning."

Sam: "Your people you mean, and I do not doubt that your people have been doing it ever since you arrived. In fact it's true that your ancestors came from Lum, In the witches castle I read a book about the arrival of people in a Stone vessel that carried them from their home through Lum then they crashed landed here and started Paradise, Which it apparently must have been in comparison to where they came from."

Ed: "What, is the book still there. That must belong to our people the witch shouldn't have it, can I read it."

Sam: "The book is there for sure but you don't know how to read Ed..."

Ed: "Well we will take it and you can read it to me on our journey,"

Sam: "Alright Ed you have persuaded me, in your own stupid way you had a good idea, grabbing some books for our journey, lets get this wizard to the witch."

Ed rather pleased with himself continued to eat Yum Bird slices. After they were done eating Sam put the fire out and they set off, leaving the road they had been traveling on behind, to walk through the farm land which had dirt paths that wound between sections of plants. About half way to the castle Sam stopped and raised his open palm to signal Ed to stop.

Ed: "What is it?"

Sam: "Sounds like a Gavulox"

*Gavulox are somewhat ox like in appearance and a hazard to farmers across Intearth, The have a magic specialization that allows them to manipulate dirt and rock, They can stick their horns into the earth and uproot a whole field in less than a Lumin, They also have sharp teeth and clawed feet instead of hooves, that help them when feeding on the farm animals. Their skin is scaled, they can grow to any size, they start out the size of cat.*

Ed: "How big is it?"

Sam: "I can't see it but from the sound its bigger than a cow"

Ed: "What can we do about it? Colt's dogs are all being kept near the Colt farm house to protect the Colt's, even if we had whistle to call them they wouldn't come"

Sam: "We don't need the dogs to kill the beast, we just need to get by the beast, let me think."

Sam sat still for a few Lumins before the earth beneath their feet began to move like waves of water. The crops they had been using as cover all fell over, the bull sized creature made eye contact with Sam and charged. Ed dropped the gurney and ran the opposite direction from Sam. The Gravelox covered the distance between itself and Sam in mere Lumends. Sam's face went pale, the mouth of the foul thing was wide open and about to clamp down on him, and like slow motion he let himself fall to the ground to avoid the mouth. The Gravelox got his arm though and just as soon as its jaws closed the arm was gone.

Sam rolled away, stood up and started running again. The Gravelox noticed at this moment the body sitting on the gurney. Graveloxen are known for being lazy and will not pass up an easy meal. It placed its horns into the earth and the ground beneath the gurney began to move in waves carrying the wizard to the Gravelox. It opened its mouth wide to let the whole body move into its mouth, As the Gravelox brought its jaws down on the torso of the wizard, the thing's head exploded.

The wizard didn't get by unscathed, bone shrapnel traveling at tremendous speed went through him like an arrow through a bed matt (typically cotton and fabric blood was pouring out of him creating a pool and he was raving mad again screaming and writhing on the ground.

Ed rushed to Sam's side tearing of his own shirt to make a turnakit then, leaving the unconscious Sam Ed rushed to the wizard. The wizards body began to sink into the pool of blood which was also beggining to drag down the Gravelox'= Ed grahhed tue arm of the raving person to pull him out of the pool but found the blood was like glue attaching him the the person and he took began to get pulled through the blood with the rest of everything else it touched. Ed was sy6=

The crimson pool expanded beneath them like a living thing, its surface rippling with patterns that hurt to observe directly. Where the Gravelox's remains touched the blood, the mixture began to hiss and bubble, releasing vapors that smelled of burnt copper and decay. Ed's boots sank deeper into what had once been solid earth, now transformed into something between liquid and flesh.

The wizard's screaming took on a rhythmic quality, each cry punctuated by a wet, tearing sound as bone fragments worked their way through his torso. His free hand clawed at the air above him, fingers tracing symbols that left brief trails of silver light before dissolving. Tom appeared at the edge of the blood pool, fur standing on end, golden eyes reflecting an intelligence that seemed far too knowing for a simple farm cat. The feline began to pace the perimeter, never stepping into the crimson mire but watching with the patience of a predator waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Sam woke up to a throbbing pain where his arm had been, the phantom sensation of fingers he could no longer move. The tourniquet Ed had fashioned held firm, though dark stains showed where blood had seeped through the fabric. Around him, the crimson pool had solidified into a crust that cracked like dried mud, revealing patches of normal earth beneath. The wizard lay motionless nearby, his breathing shallow but steady, the bone fragments having worked themselves out during whatever dark healing had taken place.

Tom sat washing his paws with deliberate precision, as if the chaos of the past Lumers had been nothing more than an afternoon hunt. The cat's golden eyes fixed on Sam with an expression that might have been satisfaction or judgment, though it was impossible to tell which.

Ed emerged from behind an overturned section of crops, his face pale and streaked with dirt. He carried Sam's fallen satchel in one hand and a peculiar fragment of what had once been the Gravelox's horn in the other. The horn piece pulsed with a faint inner light, casting shadows that moved independently of Ed's movements.

Ed: "The blood stopped pulling everything down when you woke up. I cannot say whether that means something good or something terrible."

Sam flexed the fingers that were no longer there, wincing as phantom pain shot through the empty space.

Ed watched his friend's face contort with each wave of phantom sensation, remembering stories the farm healers told about severed limbs. They claimed the missing parts didn't simply vanish, but became part of something larger, contributing their magic to the endless web that connected all things beneath the Spherve's surface. Some workers swore they could still feel their lost fingers during the deepest part of leep, reaching through soil and stone toward roots they would never touch again.

The wizard's eyelids fluttered, and Ed noticed that where each bone fragment had pierced his flesh, the wounds had sealed themselves with what looked like tiny doorways, perfectly round holes that seemed to lead somewhere else entirely. Through them, glimpses of distant caverns flickered like memories half-remembered, and a sound like rushing water echoed faintly from depths no one had ever measured.

The absence felt wrong in ways that went beyond physical loss. Where his arm had been severed, the magical essence that composed his being seemed frayed at the edges, like a tapestry with loose threads that might unravel further if disturbed. Sam had heard tales from other farm workers who had lost limbs to Graveloxen or farming accidents, some spoke of the severed parts continuing to exist somewhere, maintaining a connection across distance that manifested as phantom sensations. Others claimed their lost flesh had been absorbed into the earth itself, becoming part of the endless magical substrate that formed Intearth's foundation.

The tourniquet Ed had fashioned was already beginning to merge with Sam's remaining flesh, the fabric dissolving and reforming as his body's magic worked to seal the wound permanently. Within a few Lumers, there would be nothing left but smooth skin where his arm had been, as if he had emerged from his bubble that way. The thought brought neither comfort nor distress, it simply was, another adaptation to the dangerous world they inhabited. The wizard's breathing had steadied, but strange marks had appeared across his exposed skin where the bone fragments had penetrated, not scars, but symbols that seemed to shift and writhe when observed too closely. Ed crouched beside the crystallized blood pool, using a stick to prod at its surface. The material rang like glass when struck, yet underneath the translucent crust, darker shapes moved in slow, deliberate patterns.

Tom approached the unconscious wizard and sat precisely three paces away, tail twitching with an alertness that suggested the danger had not entirely passed. The cat's golden eyes never left the wizard's face, as if waiting for something specific to occur. The Gravelox horn fragment in Ed's hand grew warmer, its inner light pulsing in rhythm with the wizard's heartbeat.

Ed: "We need to get moving before whatever that thing was calling decides to answer. And Sam, your arm... we need to find that witch sooner rather than later."

The wizard's eyes fluttered open as Ed spoke, pupils dilated and unfocused. His lips moved soundlessly at first, then formed words in a language that made the air itself seem to recoil. The symbols on his skin pulsed brighter, and the crystallized blood beneath him began to crack with hairline fractures that spread outward like a spider's web.

Wizard: "The Stone... where is the Stone of Abandon?"

His voice carried both the frail rasp of age and something else entirely, a resonance that seemed to come from deep within the earth itself. Tom's fur stood completely on end, and the cat backed away three more paces, never breaking eye contact with the awakening figure. Ed instinctively gripped the Gravelox horn fragment tighter, its warmth now almost burning against his palm.

Sam studied the wizard's face with the careful attention of someone who had learned to read danger in the subtlest changes of expression. The man's features seemed to shift between two distinct appearances, one moment showing the weathered lines of advanced age, the next revealing skin that appeared almost translucent, as if something beneath was trying to surface. The symbols etched across his flesh pulsed in sequence, each mark lighting up for precisely three Lumends before dimming and passing the glow to the next.

Ed noticed that wherever the wizard's blood had touched the earth, small crystalline formations had begun to sprout like geometric flowers. They chimed softly when the wind passed through them, creating a haunting melody that seemed to resonate with the fragment of Gravelox horn still clutched in his hand. Tom's ears flattened against his skull, and the cat began to back away in a wide arc, never turning his golden eyes from the prone figure.

Sam: "Ed, we should bind his hands before he fully awakens. Whatever magic he carries, I don't want to face it again with only one arm."

The wizard's left eye opened fully while his right remained sealed shut, giving his face an unsettling asymmetry. When he turned toward Sam's voice, only that single dark orb tracked the movement, while the closed lid twitched as if something beneath was trying to push its way out. The symbols across his torso began to pulse faster, their light casting moving shadows that seemed to dance independently of their source.

Ed fumbled through the wizard's small bag with trembling fingers, pushing past the leather shoes to find something suitable for binding. His hand closed around what felt like a coil of rope, but when he pulled it into the light, the material appeared to be woven from hair, each strand a different color and thickness. The rope felt warm to the touch and seemed to writhe slightly in his grip, as if it retained some memory of the beings from which it had been taken.

Tom suddenly arched his back and hissed at something behind them, his gaze fixed on the crystallized blood pool. Within its translucent depths, the dark shapes that had been moving sluggishly now pressed upward against the surface, creating bulges that cracked the glass-like crust. One of the shapes had the distinct outline of a human hand, fingers spread wide as if reaching for the world above.

The wizard's right eye finally opened with an audible wet sound, revealing not the expected pupil but a swirling void that seemed to draw in the surrounding light. When he spoke again, his voice had gained a musical quality that made the crystalline formations sing in harmony with each word.

Wizard: "The Stone calls to its brothers beneath the surface. They have been waiting so long in the deep places, dreaming of reunion."

Ed noticed that the Gravelox horn fragment had begun to vibrate in his palm, its light now pulsing in perfect synchronization with the wizard's heartbeat. The hair rope in his other hand grew warmer, and he could swear he felt individual strands moving against his skin like tiny serpents testing the air. Tom's hackles remained raised as the cat's gaze shifted between the wizard and the blood pool, where more shapes were pressing upward with increasing urgency.

The hair rope suddenly contracted in Ed's grip, each strand pulling taut as if responding to some distant summons. Where it touched his skin, faint impressions appeared like temporary tattoos, showing fragments of faces he had never seen. The rope seemed to remember its previous owners, and their final moments flickered across Ed's palm in silent, ghostly images.

Sam watched the crystalline formations growing from the earth begin to resonate with a deeper tone, their chiming harmony now joined by vibrations that seemed to rise from far beneath the surface. The sound recalled the deep songs that miners sometimes reported hearing in the deepest shafts, melodies that predated any known civilization and spoke of vast chambers where ancient things still moved in patient circles.

Tom's ears swiveled toward the horizon, detecting something beyond human perception. The cat's golden eyes reflected not just Lum's light, but also the strange glow emanating from the wizard's symbols. For the first time since the encounter began, Tom took a step closer to the group rather than away, as if some greater threat now approached that made even the awakening wizard seem like the lesser danger.

A low tremor moved through the earth beneath them, distinct from the Gravelox disturbance that had come before. This one was rhythmic and deliberate, as if something very large and very unhurried was placing one foot in front of the other somewhere beneath the crust of soil and rock. The crystalline formations that had sprouted from the blood-touched earth all tilted in unison toward the north, like compass needles answering a new pole. The chiming they produced shifted from its haunting minor harmony into something flatter and more urgent.

Ed dropped the hair rope without meaning to. It hit the ground and lay still for a Lumend before beginning to move on its own, threading itself through the cracked crust of the dried blood pool with the slow purpose of a worm returning to dark soil. The Gravelox horn fragment in his other hand flared white, then went dark entirely, its inner light extinguished as though something had swallowed it. Ed opened his palm and stared at the fragment, which had gone cold and ordinary, nothing more than a piece of dead bone.

Sam rose to his feet with some difficulty, using his remaining arm against the earth to push himself upright. The phantom sensation in his missing limb intensified sharply, and the fingers that were no longer there curled into a fist. He turned to face the direction Tom was watching. Across the flattened remains of the farmland, where the Gravelox had churned the earth into long furrows, the soil at the far edge of the field had begun to dome upward in a slow, steady rise, the way bread swells above the rim of a pan, patient and inevitable.
Strones, what the locals think of as heavy duty stones but really they are refined metal pieces from a larger structure that are scattered across the surface in some areas.

The yelling Halls,
Sam and his party of adventures Open the door to a cacophony of noises. People traveling down the Halls in the thousands, making all kinds of noises, hoot, toddlers, singing, whistling. Noise making devices everything you could think of that would make noise. Someone at some point was probably using it in that Hall. The ancient beings whose power allowed the travelers to go through held back and writhing in agony at the noise.

Sam: "It seems a little cruel to those ancient things."

Guide: "It is not done intentionally to harm them though the harm is a benefit. It is simply their normal reaction to noise. It is painful for them, but there are certainly things that we can do that would be more painful. And never forget that if the noise was not made in this Hall, these things would be able to traverse again between our lands in the agonies they would not inflict on anyone. The individual suffering would be a thousand times that of what each one of them, accumulatively, are suffering now."

Among the furrows, several strones lay exposed where the Gravelox had torn the earth open, their surfaces too uniform and too lustrous for ordinary rock. The largest of them caught Lum's light and threw it back in a way that stone does not, a faint metallic gleam beneath cycles of accumulated grime. Neither Sam nor Ed spared them a second glance. There was no time.

The domed earth at the field's edge had risen to twice the height of a standing person and showed no sign of stopping. No sound accompanied its ascent, which was perhaps the worst thing about it. The Gravelox had announced itself with trembling and noise. Whatever pressed upward now did so in a silence so complete that even the crystalline formations had ceased their chiming. Tom sat at Sam's heel, motionless, every muscle in the small body coiled but unspent, as though the cat had made a calculation and was waiting for its conclusion to arrive.

The wizard turned his mismatched eyes toward the rising mound and drew a long, slow breath through his nose. The symbols across his skin stilled entirely, every one of them dark at once, the way a lantern goes dark when a hand cups the flame from all sides.

The mound crested and split. Not with violence, not with the explosive force the Gravelox had used, but with a slow, deliberate patience that was somehow worse. The soil peeled back in four directions like the petals of a flower opening at the end of a long season, and from beneath rose a column of strones, dozens of them, fused together into something that resembled a spine. Each piece was a different size yet they fit together with the precision of things that had been waiting underground for exactly this arrangement. They caught Lum's light the same way the scattered strones in the field did, that cold metallic gleam beneath the grime of uncounted Cycles, but together they gave off a low, resonant hum that Sam could feel in his back teeth and in the place where his arm was no longer.

The wizard pressed both palms flat against the cracked earth and spoke in a voice stripped of all its strangeness, flat and careful and deliberate as a person reading aloud something they do not yet understand.

Wizard: "It is not the Stone of Abandon that called them. It was the blood."

None of them moved. The column of fused strones stood at its full height, humming with that low resonance, and the four folded sections of earth held their open position as though the ground itself was waiting for an answer. Ed's eyes went from the column to the wizard, then back again. He took one step sideways, placing himself between the rising thing and Sam without appearing to have decided to do so.

Sam looked down at the dark crust of the blood pool, at the hair rope that had threaded itself into it and gone still, at the place where the Gravelox's remains had dissolved into the mixture. The phantom fingers on his missing arm flexed again, slow and involuntary, and the sensation this time ran all the way up past the stump and into his chest. He pressed his remaining hand flat over the tourniquet and held it there.

Sam: "Whose blood is doing the calling. Yours or mine."

The wizard did not look at him. The mismatched eyes stayed fixed on the column, watching the individual strones shift against one another with small, deliberate adjustments, settling into tighter configurations the way a person arranges themselves in a chair before a long conversation. When the wizard finally answered, the voice was quieter than it had been, and the flatness in it had taken on the quality of someone reporting a thing they very much wish were not true.

Ed looked sidelong at the wizard's hands, which had stilled entirely during this long silence. The fingers were calloused in patterns that did not match any farm work or common craft he had ever seen, deep grooves worn into the pads of certain fingers and nowhere else, the kind left by a tool used the same way for many Cycles without variation. The bag at the wizard's waist was closed again, though Ed had not seen him close it. The leather shoes he had pulled from its depths sat in the dirt nearby, small and dry and wholly unremarkable, sitting beside the very stone that had called down a tempest, as though the two objects were of equal weight and importance to whoever had packed that bag.

Wizard: "Both. And the Gravelox makes three. Blood calls to blood beneath the surface, and three sources together is enough to wake what remembers being whole."

The column of fused strones shuddered once, a single full-body tremor that passed through every piece of its assembled length, and then it was still again. From the open earth at its base, a thin vapor rose, not the acrid burn of the blood pool, but something older and cooler, the smell of caverns that have never known Lum's light, of deep wet stone and the particular darkness that exists so far beneath the surface that even the ambient magic of the world grows thin and strange. Sam's remaining hand tightened against the tourniquet. Tom pressed his small body against Sam's calf and stayed there.

Ed turned the dead Gravelox horn fragment over in his palm, studying the place where its light had gone out. The surface that had been warm moments before was now cold enough to pull heat from his fingers, and along its broken edge, a fine lattice of hairline fractures had appeared that had not been there before, spreading outward from the center the way ice cracks when something heavy stands upon it from below. He closed his fist around it and looked at the wizard.

Ed: "What does it want to be whole again."

The wizard's palms remained flat against the earth. The symbols across his skin stayed dark, every one of them, and the absence of their light made him look older than he had before, a thing worn down to its last useful shape. The column of fused strones made one small adjustment near its uppermost section, two pieces grinding against one another with a sound like a key turning in a lock that has not been opened in a very long time.

Wizard: "It does not want anything. Wanting is for things that remember themselves. What is down there does not remember. It only recognizes. Three sources of blood above its resting place, and it recognizes the pattern. The last time that pattern occurred, someone was trying to open the way between the deep vaults and the surface. It has been rising toward that pattern ever since. It does not know the ones who made it are long dead."

The vapor rising from the base of the column thickened as he spoke, pooling around the fused strones and spreading outward across the churned earth in a low, slow tide. Where it touched the scattered strones in the field, the ones the Gravelox had torn from the soil, each one produced a faint answering tone, brief and low, the way a bell sounds when a second bell nearby is struck. Tom did not move from Sam's calf. The wizard lifted one palm from the ground, turned it over, and studied the impression the cracked earth had left in the skin with the careful, unhurried attention of someone reading a message they expected and did not welcome.

Sam looked at Ed and Ed looked at Sam. The kind of look that passes between two people who have both arrived at the same conclusion and are each waiting for the other to say it first. Ed broke first, gesturing toward the domed earth with the hand that still held the dead horn fragment.

Ed: "If it only recognizes the pattern and not the people, then the pattern is the problem. So we stop being three sources of blood above its resting place."

The wizard turned the studied palm upward and held it out flat, as though weighing something invisible. The vapor curled around the extended fingers without touching them, parting the way water parts around a stone that has sat in a streambed long enough for the current to know its shape. The column of fused strones made no further adjustment. It stood in its eerie patience, the low hum of it pressing against the inside of the chest, felt more than heard, and the open earth at its base continued to breathe out that deep cold smell of lightless places and ancient wet rock. The wizard closed his fingers slowly and lowered his hand.

Wizard: "One of the three must move. Far enough that the pattern no longer holds its geometry. The thing below measures distance in ways that are not our ways, but distance still breaks the shape. The question is which of us can move fast enough, and which of us, in our present condition, cannot."

He did not look at Sam's missing arm when he said it.

Ed looked at Sam. Sam looked at the column. The column hummed its patient, subterranean hum and waited for the geometry of blood to resolve itself one way or another.

Sam got to his feet a second time, slower than the first, and turned his back on the column entirely. He looked south, in the direction of the witch's castle, in the direction of the road he had laid with his own hands two Cycles prior. He stood there for three full Lumins, long enough that Ed opened his mouth twice and closed it twice without producing any sound. Tom remained at Sam's heel, pressed against the calf, still as carved stone. Then Sam picked up his sack with his remaining hand, settled the strap across his shoulder, and began walking south at a steady pace, neither hurrying nor dawdling, the walk of someone who has made a decision and sees no further use in discussing it.

Behind him, at the edge of human perception, the hum of the fused strones dropped a single tone. Just one. Low and slow, the way a bell sounds when the thing striking it is already moving away.

Ed watched Sam's back until it became a fixed point against the pale farmland, steady and unhurried, and then he turned to the wizard. The column of fused strones had not moved, but its hum had changed in character, less a call and more a settling, the way a house beams groan and ease after a long cold leep gives way to warmth. The vapor at its base was thinning. Ed noticed that the crystalline formations nearest to the blood pool had gone quiet as well, their chiming done, each small geometric flower frosted over with a faint iridescent crust as though the magic that had sprouted them was now being drawn back down into the earth from which it had come.

The wizard rose from the ground in stages, one knee first, then the other, then upright, moving with the deliberate care of someone taking inventory of damage while appearing not to. The symbols across his skin remained dark. He brushed the cracked earth from his palms and looked south after Sam, then looked at Ed, and then looked at the strone column one final time with an expression that was not relief and was not fear but sat somewhere in the long flat country between the two.

Wizard: "The geometry is broken. It will sink back down. In a Spanth or two the field will not remember any of this, and neither will the thing below. It does not hold memories. Only patterns."

Ed looked at the dead horn fragment in his fist, then at the wizard, then at the path Sam had taken south. He pocketed the fragment, picked up his satchel from the dirt where he had dropped it, and followed Sam without another word. Tom fell into step at his heel for precisely four paces before accelerating ahead at a trot, tail high, already outpacing both of them toward whatever the witch's castle held.

Chapter One

Long before the era of kings, there were only scattered villages, and the people of these villages lived simple, contented lives. In one such village, on a Wake unlike any other, Lum burned brighter than it ever had before.

Joan, a young person, and Dorn, the first of his name, gave themselves wholly to one another beneath that intensified light. Whether knowingly or not, they poured the full essence of their beings into a single act of unity, leaving nothing preserved for themselves. When the next Wake arrived, Dorn and Joan were gone, and a baby lay alone in a field.

The village's chief, Erik the Bold, had never chosen to bring forth life. Moved by sorrow, or perhaps fate, he took in the newborn as his own.

Erik named the child Egast. Egast never became the child Erik had hoped for. Erik was a large man, known to many as a bold risk-taker, while Egast was scrawny, articulate, cautious, and deliberate in every move he made. That did not mean, however, that Egast was afraid of a little adventure.

He was often seen running off into the woods, even though he had been forbidden to enter them on many occasions. The villagers wondered and feared what the boy might find or do in the forest. Yet most never dared ask why he went so often or what he did while he was there. They were all too afraid of the unknown.

Erik found cows in a field near the village. The first thing he tried to do was ride them, and that is how he earned the title Erik the Bold. After failing miserably in his attempts, he brought the animals back to the village. They built a fence, and from then on, the village raised cows for generations.

Egast found the cows fascinating. He stood at the fence and studied them, noting how they endured the cold of the winter Cycles without any covering upon their skin.

Curious, he asked his father,

Egast: "Erik, could I have one of these cows?"

Erik: "One of my cows? What for?"

Egast: "I want to see what their hide is like."

Erik fixed his gaze on the boy for a long moment.

Erik: "Its hide? ... Fine, but only the smallest one, boy."

Egast walked into his father's field that same Wake. He sat on the fence and observed the cows for some time. As the great shadow of the stasis-bound beast began to drift across the land, dimming Lum's glow in his region of the world, he knew which cow to choose.

Toward the back of the herd was a fully grown cow, slim, almost sickly in appearance. Egast doubted it would survive the cold cycle ahead, even if left alone. He approached it gently, petting its neck to calm it while the rest of the herd moved farther ahead. Then, with quiet purpose, he sealed its mouth and covered its nostrils until it passed. Egast worked through the Leep, skinning the animal there in the field. He buried its remains and stacked three stones as a marker of thanks for its sacrifice.

He cut the hide into squares and fashioned a rather crude, gaudy-looking book. Though his people already had a written language carved into stone, Egast became the first to put words on skin, using a branch from a coalwood tree, charred at the tip and used like ink.

Using the book and coalwood branch, Egast began documenting the animals he observed in the wild. It is thanks to him that many of that region's creatures were recorded and illustrated in his book, "The Natural Creatures of the World".

In time, the village came into contact with others. Realizing they would need a name of their own, they called their homeland Moondor. To the south lived a people who had mastered the art of farming; they named their land Farveal. To the west, by the coast, a village had learned the art of fishing and called their region Waterdale. To the east stood a great forest, where folk lived by hunting and gathering; they named their home Tresor.

To the north lived greedy people who took much and gave little. They found shelter in caves and survived on what grew within them, digging for gems and other buried resources. Their land was called Mountour. These were the neighboring tribes known to Moondor.

At first, trade flourished between them. Each village offered something the others lacked. But over time, the people of Farveal stopped trading with Moondor, having found it easier to raise their own cattle than rely on exchange.

Once all the villages had named themselves, they agreed to begin marking time. A council of wise folk, some from nearby tribes and others from lands unknown to Moondor, was assembled. They established a calendar based on the rhythm of their world. Each Wake and Leep spanned twelve Lumers. A Spanth was thirty six Wakes and Leeps, and a Cycle was twelve Spanths in length.

It was Cycle Seventeen, Egast had reached the age of twenty. By then, he had documented nearly every creature that inhabited Moondor and Tresor. His journey had taken him often to Tresor, where he spent much time learning from the forest dwellers. They taught him how to use a bow; in return, he taught them how to properly skin an animal.

One Wake, on his way back to Moondor, Egast came across a tree unlike any he had seen before. It seemed to glow faintly, almost whispering to him with an unseen voice: "Come to me. Come to me."

He placed his hand upon the bark and felt a slow, powerful rhythm pulsing beneath it like a heartbeat. The energy of the tree surged through him, warm and alive, flooding from root to leaf and into his arm. His hand began to glow.

At that moment, the tree's life force passed into him. Then, before his eyes, the tree shriveled into itself and died. The forest around him fell silent.

Egast returned to his dwelling and carried on as though nothing had transpired. He awoke to heavy breathing though this time it was not his father's. Upon further observation he came to the realization the sound came from all directions.
Stepping outside, it became clear: the breathing belonged to the woods themselves. Never before had he truly considered that the trees surrounding him were alive in such a way. Yet the matter pressing upon him was not wonder, but noise. The sound was overwhelming, a constant, suffocating rhythm occupying each passing Lumin.
Egast stood beneath that endless breath, his jaw tightening with each passing Lumin, his hands pressed hard against his ears. In a desperate cry, he raised his voice into the Wakes and shouted, "Silence!"
At once, the world obeyed. The woods grew still. The Exhale of the trees had never cared for the realm of humankind, yet this one possessed power over them. Soon, what little breath remained thinned into hushed whispers.

This was no way to begin a wake. Nonetheless, he had to take it for what it was. Curiosity stirred within him. What else might now differ from the familiar? He set out into the woods, expecting their presence would weigh heavier than before, stripping them of their usual comfort. Yet the opposite proved true. Egast felt at peace beneath their canopy. Not only did he sense the lifeforce weaving through root and branch, he also heard faint voices. Egast followed the voice to its source.

There before him stood two skunks, speaking to one another.

Male Skunk: "Come on, you know you love me."

Second Skunk: "I will not ever love a low class skunk."

Male Skunk: "I can live with that, but how about you and I have some fun behind that tree."

Egast stepped in at this moment.

Egast: "If you do not leave that nice skunk alone I will have to stop you myself."

Female Skunk: "Oh my."

Male Skunk: "Since when could the walkers talk to us."

Female Skunk: "I do not know but I like it."

Egast kicked the male skunk across the ground. The male skunk hissed and then walked away. The female skunk thanked Egast and began walking away as well. Egast at this moment grew animated with wonder at his new ability. The ability to talk to the creatures and organisms of the woods would allow him to go even further in depth in his book, "The Normal Creatures of The World". More than that he had to find out what these powers meant for him, and why he had them. Doing what he always did when it came to situations he did not understand, he began meditating. Today's meditation ended with an unexpected result, Egast heard a voice that seemed to echo throughout the forest.

The voice: "I am Dirnu, fastened to truth. I am the god of nature and from this day forward you will be known as East Father of Dirn. I created the creatures of the world and the plants they feed on. I have chosen you as my shepherd to guide the people of your world to the one true faith. I grant you permission to write a Codex for the People of the Dirn to follow and you will tell them to pray to me through temples of the various things I have put on this world."

Egast was hesitant to listen to a voice in his head, but he did not see the harm in it since he had just about run out of things to do. He looked down at his hands, then lifted his gaze to the trees surrounding him, and spoke aloud: "I need something to write on." Paper appeared before him, which was something entirely unfamiliar to him. He then said aloud: "I need a coal branch," and there it was. He stood very still, eyes wide, turning the objects over in his hands. He looked upward as though addressing the air: "Can Dirnu hear my thoughts right now, if he is so powerful?" Silence followed. Egast lowered his gaze and returned his attention to the task at hand. Writing a Codex for the People of the Dirn.

Egast looked upon the coal branch, and it began to move. He addressed the question, who would participate in this religion? He then decided the people he would want to shepherd were the educated and worthy. So the start of the page was "To those who seek knowledge and purpose, follow the rules of this Codex, and you will be given all you desire through the Dirn faith". About a paragraph down the page Egast wrote "Rule No. ONE Do not kill in spite, killing is only permitted out of necessity.". This was about all he could think of on the spot. So he did something that he would regret for the rest of his life. He glanced about the room and spoke aloud: "I need something that can write this thing for me without my input". Once again something appeared before him, this was something he had never seen before. To his eyes it was just a stick, but to the eyes of any magic knowing entity it was most definitely a wand.

Stix: "Howdy, I am called Stix the wand but you can just call me Stix."

The wand floated in front of Egast.

Egast's eyes widened and he straightened where he stood, plainly eager to have someone who could do his work for him.

Egast: "Can you finish this Codex for me."

Stix: "Anything you wish."

The wand spoke with a slight tone of guff. The wand swung itself in the air and words began to appear on the paper. "Rule No. TWO No creature or entity will perform magic without the permission of the council". Egast looked at the wand.

Egast: "Wait what council? and what is magic?"

Stix ignored Egast and kept writing. "Rule No. THREE No law will be made outside of the original Codex for the People of the Dirn". The wand began making words appear faster and faster. Egast could not keep up with the wand. "Rule No. FOUR The performance of dark magic as deemed by the council is strictly forbidden". Egast did catch the sight of the word council.

Egast: "STOP and tell me what are these things you are writing."

Though the wand was still waving above the book no words were appearing anymore.

Stix: "Well if you must know it is your future, the first five people you teach the art of magic will become members of the magic council, and you will be the leader of said council."

Stix spoke once again with a guff to his tone. Then the wand began to make the words appear again. "Rule No. FIVE No one may share the council's secrets"

Stix: "Almost finished."

The wand began to write one final law. "Rule No. SIX The punishment for breaking any of the laws is trial before the council or death.".

With the document complete, the wand floated the parchment over to Egast and flew itself into Egast's back pocket. He looked over the paper and put his hand on a nearby tree and communicated his voice to Dirnu "would this Codex serve the Dirn faith properly Dirnu god of life" Egast felt a breeze through the trees that seemed excepting to Egast so he made his way back to the village. When Egast arrived at the village there was something foreign about it to him or it was more like he was foreign to it. Egast had a realization that he would not be able to make residence in this town any longer. He decided it made the most sense to grab a few of the boys who had no family from the streets and take them as his apprentices. Egast began to walk down the road when he came across the first boy. It was a child named Orleus. Egast walked up to the boy and said "you're Orleus aren't you" and the boy responded "yes, that's me sir" with his head down. Egast said to the boy "come with me now" and though the child was hesitant he never dared to disobey his elders so he went with Egast following close behind him. It was at this time the two encountered Egast's father Erik. Knowing this might be the only opportunity for Egast to tell Erik his intentions, Egast spoke "I'm leaving with some of the village children" and Erik almost didn't notice him, instead he kept walking and looked at Egast as if he was crazy.

Assuming this was some unknown effect of the magic he ignored the matter entirely and went on with his quest. Egast came across four children in total who came with him almost completely without any regard for their safety. The children were Orleus, Fafsior, Yothar, and Vigil. On their way out of the village Egast noticed a boy fighting one of the older members of the village.

The old person shouted "Give me back my knife boy".

The boy responded "It's mine I stole it fair and square, if you liked what you had you should have taken better care not to have it stolen".

Egast stepped in and said "hey boy did you take this man's knife"

The boy said "of course I did what are ya deaf I said clear as day I took it fair and square"

Egast grabbed at the boy's hand and was able to get a small pocket knife from it.

The boy shouted "Stop that's mine"

Egast gave the old person his knife and the old person thanked him then left.

The boy asked "what's your problem man, mind your own business.?"

Egast told the boy "Your every action is my business now. I am going to teach you the ways of magic and make you my apprentice"

The boy had a quick tongue "Not on your life I don't want to learn nuttin"

Egast said "what do you want to do? if you don't want to learn anything"

The boy responded "my name is Emedus and I will die doing nothing"

Egast decided to take matters into his own hands, and use his magic to make the boy come with him. Egast spoke the words aloud in a low voice: "I need this boy to come and follow me," but nothing seemed to happen. Egast spoke again, more firmly, these specific words: "Emedus follow me." Then the boy began to mindlessly follow. Egast left the village with the five boys in tow and made it back into the woods where he had found the tree that gave him his powers. The seven of them stood before the shriveled up tree in awe. It seemed different from any tree in the woods.

Emedus asked "what happened to it?"

Egast: "It gave me magic so that I could give it to you."

Vigil stomped his feet on the ground.
Vigil: "What? Why only him!"

Egast: "Not only him, boy! All of you. You will be my apprentices until the day you or I die."

All of the boy's eyes seemed to sparkle but Vigil and Emedus seemed to be the most excited. Egast stepped closer to the tree and rested his pointed hat at the top of it. Egast then pushed the boys back away from the tree and put his hand on it. A light began to pulse where Egast's hand rested then the same light began to swirl around the tree as it began to regain life. Emedus jumped on the tree just as it began to grow taller and soon he was ten feet in the air. Vigil followed and also jumped on the tree. Fafsior was the next to jump on though he did not wait very long after Vigil, as a result the two of them were mere feet from each other. Last was Yothar who did not seem to understand what was going on at all simply that what the other boys were doing seemed fun. Orleus stood at Egast's side and did not even move an inch closer to the tree.

Egast: "Why did you not do what the other boys did?"

Orleus: "I am not so quick to follow, not to mention we do not even know how far the tree will grow."

Egast kicked Orleus towards the tree.
Egast: "Indeed you are right, but I do."

Orleus grabbed on as he looked back down at Egast, his brow furrowed. Orleus gripped the bark and held still as the tree continued its rise. The tree grew eight hundred feet in the air which made it tower much higher than anything in the whole area. Egast shouted up to the children: "Whoever brings me back my hat wins my magic wand." The nearest to the top was Emedus who was four hundred feet from it. Next was Vigil who was four hundred and fifty feet from the top. Fafsior was just twenty feet behind Vigil. Second from last place was Yothar who was now making a hasty approach on Fafsior who was one hundred feet from him. Naturally last was Orleus who was two hundred feet from the ground. Orleus sat on the thickest branch in his vicinity and waited, intending to claim the hat from whichever boy descended with it.

Using magic Egast set up a small hut at the base of the tree with a table and two chairs. One end of the hut had a door about Egast's size, the other had a hole that a deer could fit through. Egast pulled out his Book The Natural Creatures of The World and the wand which he had previously used to write the Codex.

Stix: "How can I help you today, oh mighty and great wizard?"

Egast frowned.
Egast: "Frankly the only way you can help me is by keeping your mouth shut."

Stix did not seem offended in the slightest.
Stix: "Tis the nature of the beast."

Stix did not say another word.

Egast: "I am sorry. I need you as a writing utensil for the time being."

Egast had never seen a wand before this one and it was the first wand to ever exist in this world, yet somehow he had a sense that it was not natural for wands to talk and something about it was altogether unsettling. The thought crossed his mind to do away with the wand entirely but as he processed the idea the wand seemed to heat up and almost burned his hand. Egast was unsure if it was his doing or the wands but he disregarded the issue for now and began to write in his book. He flipped to the first page of his book and read the title "The Albatross" ; this would be the first on his list of animals to talk to. He spoke aloud: "Albatross, come to me and answer my questions." Sure enough an albatross arrived through the door Egast had put on the other side.

Meanwhile at the top of the tree Emedus was making a strong effort to get to the hat but he was not the most athletic of the boys. For every foot Emedus was able to climb Vigil was able to climb two. Then gaining on him was Fafsior, the most athletic of the group who was moving at twice the speed of Vigil. His movement was comparable to that of a squirrel. Vigil looked down and saw his competition coming up quickly. He waited in place for a minute, which threw Fafsior off because he ran into Vigil sooner than he expected. Vigil proceeded to kick him in the face causing Fafsior to fall. He started screaming as he rapidly approached the ground. Egast looked up through a hole in his hut allowing him to see Fafsior was falling. He spoke aloud: "Give Fafsior a soft and safe landing." Tree branches began moving under Fafsior slowing him down gradually, until his eventual soft landing at the bottom. Fafsior took a seat at the base of the tree looking up in disappointment and curiosity.

Yothar was moving at about the same pace as Vigil and was a hundred feet from him. Emedus was now three hundred feet from the top and Vigil was still one hundred feet behind him. All the boys were making a steady climb up the tree when a ominous cawing could be heard. A great shadow was cast upon the tree and the immediate area around it. What looked like a giant black moving blob was directly above the tree and coming down towards it. As the blob approached, Emedus could make out that it was a murder of crows. Hundreds of crows were coming towards him and he began to climb faster. The first few crows swept by him scratching with their talons. They were able to draw blood, Emedus was covered with scratches already. He kept climbing he would not let a few crows stop him from winning. Most of the crows swooped around Emedus but some of them began going down towards Vigil and Yothar. The first few crows to strike at Vigil met a speedy demise. He would grab them right out of the air and smash them against the tree, then drop them down to try and hit Yothar. Meanwhile Yothar used his baggy clothes to cover all exposed areas to prevent the crows from scratching him. This strategy worked well but it slowed him down. He was now moving at half the speed of Vigil.

Emedus was now fifty feet from the top and drenched in his own blood he did not resist the crows in the slightest, ignoring them was his strategy. His blood was dripping down onto Vigil and Yothar who did not seem that bothered by it. But Orleus was incredibly bothered by the blood dripping down on him. He did his best to create a leafy umbrella but it only kind of worked keeping a majority of the blood off him but some still got through. Vigil was fifty feet behind Emedus and Yothar was one hundred and fifty feet behind Vigil. Emedus was growing weak from blood loss each branch he grabbed was painful to touch. He was so close he could see the hat and was positive he was going to win. He pushed through the pain and made it to the hat, it was as blue as he imagined the darkest depths of the ocean would be. He grasped it in his left hand and tried to lift it from the top. The hat would not budge it had to weigh thousands of pounds the fact that the top of the tree was supporting it was astounding. Emedus remembered that this was a tree infused with magic and went back to coming up with a way to get this hat off before Vigil got there.

Emedus tried everything he could think of from using leverage to get off, to just pure strength nothing seemed to work. Now Vigil was right behind him just ten feet away and covered in blood of different shades. Vigil's eyes at the moment were wide open, his smile was from ear to ear and it most closely resembled a serial killer about to partake in his daily killing. Emedus's jaw tightened and his body drew back as Vigil drew near. He called down to Vigil.
Emedus: "I give up, you can have the hat, I can't do it on my own."
Vigil continued to climb with the same menacing look, he no longer paid any attention to the crows that would swoop down to attack him. He had his mind set on defeating his competition more than anything else.

Vigil reached up and grabbed Emedus's foot. He pulled as hard as he could, gripping the tree with his left hand and the foot with his right. Emedus had both hands on the tree so his grip was much better than Vigil's. Taking his left hand off the tree Vigil grabbed on to Emedus with both hands to rip him off. Emedus held onto the hat as tightly as he could but with Vigil pulling he noticed the top of the tree began to crack. Emedus's eyes went wide and he glanced upward at the hat, then at the cracking wood beneath it. The hat was too heavy for the tree, so the tree had a magic cast on it that allowed it to support the hat; by taking the tree with the hat he would be able to carry down the hat. Then the tree top snapped and it began to fall along with Vigil and Emedus. Just as Yothar reached the point that both Emedus and Vigil where at they fell leaving him at the top to have to climb back down. He let out a loud *sigh* and began to make his way back down to the bottom in a gloomy fashion. Vigil and Emedus were clawing at each other throwing punches and everything else they could manage to get the hat. In addition to fighting each other the crows had swarmed around the two and were ripping away flesh. They were falling fast as they approached Orleus. Orleus's gaze fixed on the tumbling ball of blood and feathers, and his hands tensed around the branch he gripped, before he released a slow breath and also began working his way down the tree.

With a big *CRASH* the boys and the birds hit the ground still ripping at each other. Egast finished the page of the book he was working on and closed it. After slipping it into some unknown pocket of his robe he began to walk towards the two fighting on the ground. The crows slowly began to dissipate into thin air as Egast got closer. Once Fafsior could make out the difference between Vigil and Emedus he walked over and kicked Vigil in the back of the head knocking him out.

Emedus stood up with the hat and stick in his hands proclaiming "I win I got the hat" as he ran over to Egast.

Egast: "So be it, this was a learning experience for me and you."

He pulled the wand out of his back pocket and threw it to Emedus.

Stix: "Stix at your service sir… wait you're just a child I won't serve anyone I do not deem worthy."

Everyone stood in stunned silence at this, including Egast, whose eyes went wide.

Emedus: "Now you listen I was promised you as a reward for getting our Masters hat and you're it so you had better behave the way I want you to."

Stix: "Sorry kid it doesn't work that way, when I was made I was given as much life as you have so I get to choose what I want to do and what I don't."

Egast walked up to Stix, put his hat on, and grabbed him.

Egast: "Stix do as Emedus tells you to."

Stix: "If you're trying to cast a spell on me you need to know my true name and that ain't information I just share."

Egast: "Is your true name not Stix?"

Stix chuckled.

Stix: "Obviously not, it's an abbreviation of my full name."

Egast: "Sorry to say but I did not promise anything more than my wand, the fact that you can't use it is not my concern."

Vigil began to wake up now and the other boys found the whole situation fairly amusing. Emedus began to pout and at the same time look the wand over in hopes of finding some way to exploit it. Egast signaled for all the boys to follow him and began walking towards the small house he had made earlier. He put his hand on it causing it to glow, planks began folding off the walls creating floors around the building until they folded into what appeared to be a total of six rooms with a large meeting space in the middle leaving the small house a left wing attachment. They all walked in and Egast said "sleep and you will all awake healed I made this house with the intent of restoring any who rest here too their most perfect form, this way not only will we be healed but also animals and anything from tools to plants". They each went into their rooms which were all identical aside from Egast's room which had a very large bed and various animal pictures on the wall. Everyone found their sleep to be the most peaceful and wondrous sleep they had ever experienced, like resting in the arms of an angel.

Everyone awoke due to a loud *crash* from the room Emedus had chosen. Fasfior was the first to arrive at the scene. The roof had caved in and Stix was floating in the center of the room. Sitting on the rubble was a giant green person with fangs. He was more muscular than even Erik the bold, he was naked and looked very confused. Stix said "These are the new people of Farveal, next time you ask me to do something I will summon much worse, oh and they're called Orc's". The Orc yelled "where am I!" as he began grabbing some of the rubble off the ground to throw at the group. Egast stood in the doorway with the other boys unsure of what to do exactly all he could think of was to stop the incoming projectiles. Meanwhile Orleus paced quietly and Vigil leaned against the wall with a faint smile on his face. Fafsior ran at the Orc and punched it in the stomach which was about as high as Fafsior could punch. The Orc was totally unaffected by the punch and sweeped Fafsior with its fist throwing him against the wall. Fafsior landed right next to where Emedus had been lying under some rubble. He dug Emedus out as quickly as he could, then the Orc came up from behind, grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him in the air. Fafsior's face went pale and his eyes grew wide; in an act of desperation he thrust his hands outward and a sword twice his size appeared in them. Using gravity and surprise as his ally he let the sword fall into the Orc putting as much force into it as he could. He managed to strike around the ribcage the sword sank through to the stomach. The Orc dropped Fafsior and fell to his knees crying in pain. Fafsior put all his strength into one great swing chopping the creature's head clean off and nearly throwing Fafsior off his feat.

Everyone was shocked. Vigil's eyes glowed and his lips drew back in a thin, hungry smile at the sight of the kill. No one noticed this though considering they just saw Fafsior not only perform magic without being taught but killing a creature three times his size.

Emedus: "Thanks for that, Fafsior."

Egast walked over demanding an explanation from Stix or Emedus. Stix floated over the back of Emedus's pocket acting as if he were just some sort of pawn in all this and Emedus offered an explanation.

Emedus: "I demanded that Stix teach me the secrets it knew of the world that I did not and Stix said he would show me one thing."

The rest was fairly self explanatory so he left it that everyone seemed to understand and Egast told the boys:

Egast: "Your next mission is to restore this room to its previous state, you are welcome to try and use magic to do it if you think you can muster it, I have some business in the south."

Orleus thinking that would be simple enough rushed over to Fafsior and said:

Orleus: "Tell us how you performed magic so we can do it too."

Fafsior: "Well I just thought, 'give me something that could kill this Orc' and the sword appeared in my hands."

Orleus stood quietly for a moment, his brow furrowed, then spoke just loud enough that all the other boys heard it:

Orleus: "I see, so thought is how we perform magic, I imagine we must be very specific otherwise we could end up with an unexpected result."

Fafsior turned the sword over in his hands, studying the blade with a craftsman's eye rather than a warrior's. The weapon had appeared fully formed at his thought, yet now that the urgency of the moment had passed, he could feel something through the hilt that he had not noticed during the fight: a slow, dual-pull resonance moving through the metal, the same two-directional tension that exists in all composed matter, but concentrated and deliberate, as though the sword remembered being made. He set it point-down in the earth and watched it stand without leaning.

Yothar crouched before the fallen Orc's severed remains and studied them with the particular stillness of a person cataloguing rather than grieving. The creature's green skin had already begun to change at the edges, the color withdrawing from the extremities the way warmth withdraws from a fire newly banked. He did not touch anything. He looked at the pattern of withdrawal, the order in which the magic that had composed the Orc was releasing itself back into the ambient field of the room, and his lips moved very slightly as though he were counting.

Vigil watched Yothar watch the body, and he watched Fafsior watch the sword, and he watched Orleus watch everyone with that careful distance Orleus kept between himself and all events he had not chosen to enter. Vigil's own hands were loose at his sides, the dried blood from the tree still dark beneath his nails. When the room had been quiet long enough for the absence of Stix's voice to become noticeable, Vigil walked to the far wall, sat down with his back against it, and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed to the measured rhythm of someone who has decided, for the moment, to wait.

Vigil stood apart from the others, arms crossed, his eyes moving from boy to boy with the slow patience of something that hunts by waiting. He had listened to Orleus speak without expression, without the eager brightness that had overtaken Fafsior's face or the calculating stillness that had settled over Yothar. When Orleus finished, Vigil uncrossed his arms and turned to look at the ceiling of the restored room, as if reading something written there in the grain of the wood.

Vigil: "So if I think Kill Emedus, he will just drop dead?"

The room went very quiet. Emedus stopped turning the wand over in his hands. Fafsior's grip tightened on the doorframe. Yothar took one slow step backward, placing himself beside the window without appearing to have chosen to do so. No one laughed. No one spoke to correct Vigil or to answer him, and Vigil did not seem to require an answer. He lowered his gaze from the ceiling and let it rest on Emedus with the same unhurried attention, and then his mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile and he said nothing further. The blood from the tree still stained his hands in dark crescents beneath his nails, and he had not troubled himself to clean it.

At that moment Stix stepped in and summoned the Codex.

Stix: "All of you must know this text above all else. Memorize these rules and follow them. That will be your one requirement if you want to be wizards."

Orleus: "Since when did you care about anything?"

Stix: "Since I wrote most of the damn thing, you ungrateful punk."

Vigil: "What if we do not want to follow the rules?"

Stix: "That would be very problematic because each one of you will be in charge of one of these rules as each of you will become a member of the council of Dirn."

Yothar: "Wait, how do we decide who is in charge of what law, and will we have to do stuff?"

Stix: "Frankly I can already tell who will be in charge of what law just by looking at you."

Yothar: "You can?"

Stix: "Of course. First is Fafsior who will be responsible for the first law of killing as he will be the strongest of you and able to handle those who break the law."

Fafsior had a blank stare and Vigil looked at him like he had been robbed of something.

Stix: "Next is Yothar who will enforce the second law, followed by Orleus in charge of the third law, Vigil is in charge of the fourth law, lastly Emedus is in charge of the fifth law."

Orleus: "What about the sixth law, will the master handle that one?"

Stix: "Of course not. It will be shared between you. When you find someone has broken a law you will hold council, determine the punishment, and the person in charge of that law will enact said punishment."

Chapter Two

Egast was making his way to the south now, it had been a long time since anyone from Moondor had met the people of Farveal and Egast thought it was about time he found out what was going on. The questions were going through his mind: why did Stix say that creature was from Farveal, what could have changed them so much. He then had the idea to use magic to find the answer to these questions. He extended his hand and spoke aloud: "Show me the people of Farveal." A moving image of the town appeared before him, it was from the perspective of a bird. The town was completely changed from when Egast had visited seventeen Cycles before. Where wooden huts once sat there were Stone towers. The windows of the towers had clothes lines between them with various garments hanging from them. The farms were still there but they were being worked by small green creatures with very apparent spines and large hands for their small stature. The biggest of them was at most four feet tall and the shortest two and a half. The town of Farveal once had a large trading market where you could get anything the other villages had but in its place there was a pit that seemed to go endlessly into the depths. The most notable difference was the massive fortress with huge stone walls around it. There were many Orc's lining the walls with bows, spears and other weapons. At both the back left and right corner of the fortress was a large cylindrical tower with a bridge between them. At the center most portion of the bridge was a bulge with windows and a large fire burning on top of it. The bird swooped down to take a closer look at the tower and an arrow struck the bird then Egast's vision ended.

Egast was still two days' walk from the town of Farveal and he was a little restless to get there. No definitive path had been made yet but there were some markings throughout the forest from traders that guided them in the general direction. While walking in the woods Egast began to hear what sounded like voices in the distance. He whispered "Make me unsee" and this turned him invisible and he began making his way towards the voices. He could make out that one voice was deep and each word was like a growl while the other voice was majestic but still firm and assertive. Egast got to a point where he could see a grizzly bear and a buck standing feet from each other holding a conversation.

The buck said "with that matter out of the way we must now discuss the issue of the green men coming further into our woods".

The bear responded "they are no different from the others simply larger and more brutish I have found they are not a threat".

The deer's ears flattened and its legs stiffened.

The deer: "Not a threat to you maybe but countless deer have disappeared from the woods ever since their arrival. I fear for my species if they are left alone."

The bear did not look surprised. The bear: "I think you would find your inability to take care of your own is not my problem, but to help ease your burden I will provide you with information that may prove useful. The death of the deer is not due to the Orc's coming out into our woods it is because of a spirit of chaos altering your race into strange things that only come out at night"

The deer's head tilted sharply and its nostrils flared.

The deer: "Orc's? how do you know all these things and what of this spirit, what can be done?"

The bear's chest rose slowly before he spoke.

The bear: "the bear clan has countless spies in these woods that's how we obtain all our information, as for your survival I recommend migrating elsewhere, don't eat anything new in these woods, and if you can make a deal with a spirit they will grant you strength"

The deer stamped one hoof against the ground.

The deer: "What do you mean make a deal with a spirit?"

The bear thought this was a good time to show the deer the changes he had undergone. He stood on two legs like he was about to attack the deer. The deer stepped back ready to fight but then the bear's hair began to recede into his skin and his face began to shrink. His body was that of a person and his face was very ugly but also that of a man.

The bear: "By taking this form I have been able to steer hunters away from the lands of the bear clan, in their tongue I am Sustin the ferocious."

The deer turned to leave, pausing only long enough to speak.

The deer: "I think you will find the Orc's as you call them do not hunt for food they simply come to kill."

Egast stood at the edge of the clearing, his fingertips beginning to tingle, and a dual-gravity awareness pulsing through his entire body. His free hand pressed flat against the nearest trunk, and his jaw tightened as the bear's words about strange things that only come out at night settled around him.

Egast realized his frequent wanderings into the forbidden woods had not been mere curiosity or rebellion. Some innate connection to the magical forces that composed all matter had been drawing him toward disturbances in the natural order. The peculiar incidents during his forest expeditions, the way animals reacted to his presence, even the responsive behavior of the coalwood branch, all pointed to an ability he was only beginning to comprehend.

The cow hide tucked within his robes seemed to pulse with warmth against his chest. Perhaps his experimentation with animal materials had been the first step toward understanding how to detect and counter these chaotic transformations. If creatures were being altered by malevolent forces during the Leep hours, then someone with his growing abilities might be able to create protections or methods of identification.

Egast was not surprised to find that he was not the only person to have obtained magic, but the bear's revelation about chaotic spirits suggested threats beyond simple divine gifts. He felt he needed to consult with Dirnu about this spirit of chaos and understand why such opposing forces were allowed to corrupt the natural world. He put his hand on the tree he had been hiding behind and made its bark open, creating a small hole for him to meditate. He then closed the bark when he was inside the tree.

Egast closed his eyes and sat still within the hollow of the tree. A glow crept through the darkness behind his eyelids, growing steadily brighter, and his form seemed to drift forward through it. He pressed his focus toward the light, drawn onward through the luminous haze. Within moments he could make out what appeared to be a huge cave with giant trees lining the ceiling, walls, and floors. At the center of the cave was a ball of light illuminating the cave. He looked back and saw there was no entrance he could have entered from. He went back to looking around and directly beneath the light he noticed there was a giant creature sitting with legs crossed. He was floating towards it the closer he got the more of it he could make out. Its torso and neck were that of a man, it had a lion's mane and face of an eagle. Its legs were like the hind legs of a deer and its left arm was thick and like a bears while its right arm was thin and like a wolf's. Crowning its head were two antlers that connected to form a halo above its head.

Dirnu: "I am Dirnu, the one who talked to you before tell me what do you think of my appearance. You are the first to have ever viewed my true form."

Egast: "It makes me wonder did you base some of the creatures off yourself or did you change your form to look like them."

Dirnu: "I let every original creature create themselves; some were humble while others were greedy."

Egast: "I see, but more urgently I have questions that need to be answered. I saw one of your creatures change into a person before my own eyes. Why did you grant them this ability it is very different from the way I understood you to be"

Dirnu stood silent for a moment.

Dirnu: "You are very wise it was not like me at all to do something like that as it was not me who did it."

Egast stepped forward, his words rushing out before Dirnu had fully finished speaking.

Egast: "If it wasn't you, then who? I need to know what is going on here."

Dirnu: "I understand your need to know, but you will need to make a contract with me if you want information. If you make the prime objective of the Dirn faith and all its followers to protect the sanctity of my creatures and aid their survival, then I will tell you."

Egast: "Very well, it is your faith to command. I will gladly obey."

Dirnu: "I will tell you all you need to know. I am not the only self proclaimed god; there are four others like me. Mortem, self proclaimed god of death; the beautiful Alchemea, self proclaimed god of elements; Exitus, self proclaimed god of destruction; and Evant, self proclaimed god of fate. Each of them have likely chosen a hero who is supposed to spread their religion. The more followers, prayers, and offerings we have the stronger we are."

Egast: "So which of these gods changed the bear to a man?"

Dirnu turned his gaze downward, his expression falling.

Dirnu: "None of them did. Confus the god of chaos is credited with all the unnatural creatures of this world; he takes our creations and alters them."

Egast: "So what do you want me to do with these unnatural creatures?"

Dirnu: "I will let you decide what you think is best for your world, just so long as you maintain our contract."

Egast: "Then our counsel is over. I thank you and I will now take my leave."

With that Egast extended his focus toward the place he had been before, but nothing happened. He fixed an exact picture of that place in his mind, concentrating as hard as he could, and reached inward once more. With that he appeared in the forest right where he had left next to the tree. He continued his journey through the woods following game trails in the general direction of Farveal. Eventually Egast reached a small cottage on the outskirts of Farveal he had once met the family that lived there, a giant of a man, his wife and six children. Egast approached the door and could hear children inside playing. He hesitated for a moment then knocked on the door. The whole cottage became silent the moment he knocked, large footsteps could be heard coming towards the door and it opened. Standing before him was an Orc even larger than the one he had seen before so big he had to keep his neck bent to stand inside.

The Orc looked him over for a moment then said "what brings you to my neck of the woods stranger?".

"I have come to investigate what seems to be a freak occurrence happening in Farveal" Egast told the Orc.

The Orc said "well that's no business of mine" and began to close the door.

Egast willed the door open and stepped inside then said "you see I used to know the family that lived here and I was interested in learning of what has happened to them"

The Orc looked angrily at Egast then responded "me and my family have always lived here we built this cottage" as he gestured towards his wife and six children who seemed frightened.

"Remain calm my friend I am not here to cause you trouble" said Egast

"I understand very well sit at my table and we can talk about this" responded the Orc

Both of them sat and the Orc asked his wife to fetch them both something to drink. The kids ran outside to play so they would not bother their father or his guest. Egast once again led the conversation.

Egast: "If I am not mistaken did you not used to be the chieftain of this town?"

The Orc responded "No I was never the chieftain of this town. I was the mayor elected by my peers, back before we changed, and I still am the mayor of this town but we recently got a King who does not seem to think I am all that necessary anymore."

Egast said "I am sorry but I am not familiar with the term King"

"Of course, a person came through one day with a cloaked companion, The person said that he would become the ruler of these lands and one day all of the lands. I told him I was the ruler of these lands and that if he wished to take leadership we could cast a vote to see who the people choose. He agreed to that and we held an election. He made all kinds of promises to the people that I could not, he said the crops would never dry up, the people would all be born strong and that meat would be abundant under his rule. Sure enough he got elected but once he was, he said he would not dethrone me as mayor he would simply become king making me a vassal of his. Then all the promises came true we all became these green creatures he called Orc's and we were all stronger because of it." said the Orc.

"What intrigues me the most about your story is the cloaked companion who was with the new king. What do you know of him?" Egast asked

The Orc said "well he is currently heading the construction of a citadel in the middle of town."

Egast thanked the Orc and said "with that I will be on my way expect another visit from me before I leave, also what was your name friend?"

"The name is Agnark" Responded the Orc.

Egast left the hut and began walking to the large town. He was still at the outskirts of the town and walking past lots of fields with the little green men working them. It was now apparent based on what he could tell the Orc's were slave drivers and the small green men were slaves. Slavery was not common but sometimes people would swear their lives to another for one reason or another. This was the first time Egast had ever seen slavery on this large a scale. At the very least the Orc's did not seem to be overly cruel to the small green men so Egast did not concern himself with the matter. As Egast approached the end of the fields and the start of stone towers more and more Orc's were looking at him suspiciously. He saw an Orc say something to one of the small green men then it ran over to Egast.

The creature said "Greetings, I am Bibs the goblin, what brings you to Farveal?"

Egast told the creature "I have business with the King".

Bibs responded "then let me guide you through town it can be dangerous to go alone"

"Then I would appreciate your company friend" said Egast.

After crossing the threshold from the farms to the towers it was immediately darker and the air was thick. All of the Orcs in the town seemed less happy than the Orcs Egast had previously seen on the farm land. There were also fewer goblins and the few that were there were treated very poorly. One Orc in an alley killed a goblin for sneezing, this made Bibs visibly tense and he walked closer to Egast after seeing it. Egast was already beginning to feel very glad this goblin had decided to help him because the town was very maze-like and he would have been lost without Bibs. There were lots of businesses at ground level from vegetable shops to weapon and armor stores. The Orcs tried to get other Orcs to come to their shops but none tried to get Egast to come over. After walking for fifteen lumins two very large Orcs blocked the path for Egast and Bibs. Egast walked up to the two of them who were both wearing full plate armor and were a little shorter than Agnark.

Egast: "Would you two mind moving, me and my friend are trying to get to the castle."

They looked at Egast and one snarled.

Orc: "What business do you have in the castle."

Egast: "My business is my own, now make way. I do not want any trouble."

One of the Orcs drew his sword.

Orc: "Well you got trouble the moment you walked into town."

The other drew an axe and was preparing to swing down at Egast. As the blade came towards Egast he spoke under his breath, "move me back three feet," and they were both surprised to see him just disappear and appear mere feet away. The other Orc was about to swing his sword but Egast was too fast. He spoke again, "heat their armor until it melts," and they immediately began to scream in pain. They dropped their weapons and both started to try to take off their armor but were only able to get handfuls of molten metal, as their flesh turned into ooze. Egast gestured for Bibs to follow him and they ran to the end of the center of town where a great wooden gate was, leaving behind the two melting orcs.

Orc: "What business do you have here?"

An Orc called down from on top of the wall.

Egast: "I request an audience with the king."

Orc: "And what of the little one?"

Bibs: "I am his guide and humble servant."

The Orc appeared to say something to someone behind him then after a few lumins of faint murmuring the gate opened. Egast and Bibs walked in the area they were now in was a courtyard above it was a bridge between two towers that had a bulge at the center. The wall and gate were connected to the towers which were six hundred lumecimal tall. The courtyard was full of warriors who were training with many different weapons. Bibs was the only goblin to be seen in the courtyard; a few Orcs even gave him the stink eye. An Orc approached wearing a robe that was made of red silk with golden trim. The Orc who was about Egast's height looked them both over and gestured for them to follow him.

Orc: "I am the king's advisor Edrik, follow me and you will have your counsel with the king."

He opened a door at the base of the left tower then spoke again.

Edrik: "This is Tower Naples totally run by the Nap family. That other tower is Tower Palermo run by the Pale family."

Egast: "Would you mind telling me of the two families while we walk up this seemingly endless staircase?"

Edrik responded very excitedly "I would love to. I have never actually had a guest before so this is the first opportunity I have had to tell someone from the outside of this place. To start, the Nap family is named for the eldest member of the family Grikug Nap who always caught sleeping but was still a great warrior. Then there was Furbog a pale Orc so his name was Frubog Pale."

Egast interrupted to ask "what does it mean for him to be a pale Orc?"

Edrik seemed pleased that Egast was listening and responded "It means his skin was white when we all changed to Orcs. We were all green except Furbog whose skin lost all color. Everyone in his family is the same way. The king saw that the other Orcs shunned them and were threatening to kill them unless they left the kingdom so King Rednar who found their skin to be very attractive and fell in love with Furbog's daughter offered for them to stay in the west tower.

Egast asked "so why does the nap family get to live in the east tower?"

Edrik smiled revealing a lot of very ugly and scary teeth which seemed to go in every direction except the right ones then said "another very good question. You see King Rednar's brother is Grikug Nap and their family built the whole castle expecting to be the only ones to live there. One can imagine the Nap family's surprise when King Rednar gave away half their home. You see they have a great lineage at the top is Grikug who married Prutha. They have six sons, Tilage, Mahk, Barnok… Oh we seem to have reached the top I suppose this will be a story for me to finish another time or if you prefer you could read my book on the great Orc familys of Farvael though it's still a work in progress"

Egast said "I would be very interested in getting a copy of the book once you complete it, perhaps you would be interested in a book I wrote"

Egast pulled out a copy of The Natural Creatures of the World and handed it to Edrik. Edrik was ecstatic as he put it away in one of his many pockets. The hall was long but one could just barely make out the main room. The hall was dark because the only light was from the windows. After five Lumends of silent walking the three of them had made their way to the Throne Room. Sitting on a giant stone throne that went all the way to the ceiling was an Orc wearing a crown of stone with a stone scepter in his hand. He seemed bored until the moment he caught a glimpse of his guests.

He immediately sat up and shouted "Ah! my long awaited guests, come in come in"

Edrik quickly ran to his side and announced to the room which was empty except for the four of them "I present Egast of Moondor son of Erik the Bold and Bibs of nowhere son of no one, to you guest though he needs no announcement here is King of Farveal Rednar the first king".

Rednar said "Don't be shy have a seat"

Edrik sat at the king's side on one of the steps of his massive throne. Egast looked around for a chair of some sort but other than a carpet that connected the two halls and ran through the room it was totally empty. Bibs sat on the floor then patted to his left gesturing for Egast to come over. Egast walked over to Bibs and acted like he was going to sit but then thought Chair appear beneath me and another chair rise under Bibs then stop after being fully revealed. They sat in their chairs though Bibs seemed confused. The King was immediately enraged, his face grew red then he began to breathe deeply trying to calm himself.

Rednar said breathing heavily "*Heavy Breath* I *Heavy Breath* am *Heavy Breath* intrigued *Heavy Breath* as to *Heavy Breath* what brings *Heavy Breath* you to my *Heavy Breath* humble abode."

Egast: "I dare not be casual with the first king but pardon me for I know not the standard for addressing a king. I Egast am the first dabler of magicks in all the lands and have come to offer you my services provided you accept the one true faith of Dirn."

Rednar now calmer began to laugh.

Rednar: "You amuse me boy, you are not the first to come to me with such a proposition, how do you think we all came to be Orc's and this castle erect. You see, a cloaked person came to me when I was nothing more than a contestant for mayor. He claimed he would aid me in the claiming of power but when I failed I cast him away. He returned saying why be mayor when I could be king. I promised to make all our city of Farveal full of strong men, women and children. Once they held me high and called me king he made it true and we all turned to these things which we have come to learn are known as Orc's."

Egast daring not to interrupt a king waited until he stopped talking then asked.

Egast: "And where might I find your person of magicks."

Rednar stood more furious before.

Rednar: "Do I bore you, if you feel you have somewhere better to be then why not be there."

He stood up, grabbed Egast and Bibs by the collar's and threw them out a window behind them. As they fell Bibs screamed but Egast's eyes went wide and in the last moments before he hit the ground he made Bibs and himself light so they would float down softly. Egast recalled being told that the strange person was heading the construction of a church. Now in the castle courtyard below there were pale orcs coming from the west and green orcs coming from the east all towards Egast and Bibs. Once each side was ten lumecimal away, Egast thought Make Egast and Bibs invisible to the eye's of mortals and snuck away. With no one for the orcs to unleash their anger on, they unleashed it on each other and a fight broke out between the green and pale orcs. Egast continued through the town with bibs while invisible until they reached a tall building with stained glass for windows which Egast had never seen before. He thought Make Egast and Bibs visible again. They appeared and some goblins who had been working on the church's roof saw and were so surprised they jumped back and rolled off the building splatting on the ground leaving behind a mess of bones, flesh, and blood.

Almost immediately two massive wolf-like creatures ran out of the building and started ripping into the piles. Egast's eyes went wide at the sight of these creatures, as he had not documented them in his book. Bibs stepped behind Egast's leg, trembling, and said "Wargs!". A cloaked person soon came out of the building and whistled; the wargs immediately stopped eating. They then fell in at his sides and he took notice of Egast.

The person: "Ahoy there friend, what brings you here?"

Egast: "I came in search of individual with great power."

The person raised his eyebrows and gestured to the half constructed building.

The person: "We should take this talk inside; would you be willing to come in."

Egast: "Lead the way."

Egast marched toward the building with Bibs, who was hesitant but still followed.

The inside was far more complete than the outside. It looked exactly like a church with hues facing a stage that had an altar on it.

The person: "This is where the yearly sacrifice will take place."

Egast at this point was sure this person had the same responsibilities as a religious leader as he had and asked a question.

Egast: "What do you sacrifice to your god?"

The person: "Whatever is most readily available, it's not complete yet so we haven't done any sacrifices but I am thinking our first sacrifice will be one of the greater beast's of the nearby forest."

A note of menace entered the person's voice as he finished speaking.

Egast: "Say no beast was readily available, what would you sacrifice then."

The person repeated himself, nearly word for word: "Whatever is most readily available."

Egast: "But what name are you called?"

The person: "They call me The Wizard around here. If you don't mind me asking, whom is it that you serve? I can tell by your aura that you too must be a wizard."

Egast: "I serve only myself."

Egast fell quiet, his face showing nothing more. They walked under a mezzanine which was mostly a frame at this point.

The Wizard: "Hmmm. You cannot fool me, your aura is not that of a lesser god's magic so I am positive you spoke to your God. But which one, perhaps one that would send you in ill prepared like Dirn or Blank. You see, my god warned me there would be others and gave me much information that will prove quite useful. He even told me some gods put too much faith in men and would not tell them of the other gods. But you need not worry I shouldn't interfere with your affairs much at all. So long as you do not meddle with mine. These people known as orcs are mine. You can fight with the other profits for the other races."

Egast: "I see, now I am on the back foot in this conversation; you seem to know far more than I, but perhaps too much knowledge can be a weakness."

The Wizard: "Spoken like a true fool, knowledge is truly the ultimate power."

Bibs, who had been silent up until this point, ran out the door.

Bibs: "Time to go, time to go."

Egast: "Until we meet again."

Egast ran out the door after him.

Egast: "What was that about."

Bibs simply pointed to the sky where a dark cloud had begun to circle around the church. Then the grass that had been on the ground in toy patches no bigger than four inches were now five feet tall and sprawling with life.

Egast now realized that the whole time they had been in the church his and The Wizard's aura had been battling and these were the side effects. Egast instructed bibs to follow him and egast began to walk to the hut he visited when he first arrived in the town.

As Egast left the town he had a newfound understanding of Orc kind and was interested in discovering other races of the land. First he had to check in and see how his apprentice's were doing.

Same characters, different story.
Meanwhile in a totally different time and place there were events taking place that someone might actually consider interesting. A tale of ten kings, a girl and a land torn in two. This story takes place in a world not unlike our own very similar in fact. Close in scale and just as awful or fantastic if you prefer. The story begins with a person and a small girl no bigger than a thumb.

Joanne: "You think they will have pudding in Dabenshire?"

Alex: "Of course they will have pudding. It's Debenshire the capital of the world."

The two walked down a dirt road the size of three of the largest fr

As Egast spread the hide flat upon the ground, something peculiar occurred. The material seemed to respond to his touch, growing smoother beneath his palms. The rough patches evened out, and tears mended themselves as if guided by an unseen force. Egast paused, studying his hands with newfound curiosity, but attributed the phenomenon to careful preparation.

Yet when he pressed both palms against the hide and concentrated, he felt a strange pull, not downward toward the surface as expected, nor upward toward Lum, but something else entirely. The hide seemed to vibrate with an energy that made his fingertips tingle. Through the material, he sensed something profound: the cow's essence had not departed with its breath, but remained woven into every fiber of its skin.

Intrigued by this discovery, Egast began testing other materials. Stone remained cold and unresponsive. Wood from the trees felt ordinary beneath his touch. But when he handled bones from their cooking fires, the same peculiar sensation stirred within his palms. Animal materials, he realized, retained traces of the magic that had once animated them, the fundamental force that composed all matter in their world, but concentrated and accessible in ways that plant and mineral matter were not.

As he worked with methodical precision, Egast noticed something extraordinary about the cow's hide. Where his fingers traced across the surface, faint patterns emerged, delicate lines that seemed to map the creature's former circulation, but with curious bifurcations that made no sense according to his understanding of animal anatomy. The lines appeared to flow in two distinct directions, some pulling toward what would have been the creature's center, others spreading outward toward its extremities.

Egast pressed his palm firmly against one of these divergent pathways and felt the dual pull he had experienced in his own body when climbing tall trees, the sensation of being drawn simultaneously toward Lum's light and toward the solid matter beneath his feet. The cow, it seemed, had possessed the same dual-gravity awareness that all creatures of IntEarth carried within them, and somehow this fundamental force had been preserved in the very structure of its hide.

This revelation sparked a methodical curiosity unlike anything Egast had encountered before. He began to examine the hide with the same careful attention he gave to his forest observations, noting how different sections responded to pressure and warmth. The hide from areas closer to the creature's heart showed stronger magical resonance, while sections from the extremities seemed to pulse with the memory of the dual forces that had once governed the animal's movement and balance.

Erik approached as Egast worked, drawn by an uncharacteristic stillness that had settled over the remaining cattle. They stood in a perfect circle around where their companion had fallen, their heads lowered and eyes fixed upon the boy's movements. Not one of them grazed or wandered, despite the fresh grass at their hooves.

Erik's weathered face grew pale as he watched Egast's hands move across the hide with impossible precision, smoothing imperfections that should have required a tanner's tools and knowledge gained through Cycles of experience. The boy worked as if guided by instinct older than learning, shaping the material with a sureness that belonged to master craftsmen, not untrained youth.

He cut the hide into squares and fashioned a rather crude, gaudy-looking book. Though his people already had a written language carved into stone, Egast became the first to put words on skin, using a branch from a coalwood tree, charred at the tip and used like ink.

Using the book and coalwood branch, Egast began documenting the animals he observed in the wild. During his forest expeditions, he noticed the parchment pages seemed to accept his words with unusual eagerness, the ink flowing more smoothly than it should have across the treated hide. More curious still, when he wrote descriptions of creatures while touching items made from similar animals, a bird's feather while writing about flight, or fish scales while documenting water dwellers, the words seemed to glow faintly before settling into permanence.

On one such expedition, as Egast knelt beside a stream to observe the fish with silver scales that darted beneath the surface, he became aware of a presence watching him from the treeline. The sensation was neither threatening nor particularly comforting, simply an awareness that pressed against the edges of his perception like a whispered name just beyond hearing. When he turned to investigate, he found only the gentle swaying of branches in the breeze, yet the feeling persisted. As he dipped his coalwood branch in the stream to clean it, the water around the tip began to glow faintly, casting dancing patterns across the riverbed stones before fading as quickly as it had appeared.

The patterns lingered in Egast's vision even after the water had returned to its natural state, spiraling geometries that seemed to echo the dual-gravity pathways he had discovered in the cow's hide. He traced his finger through the air above the stream, following the memory of those luminous whorls, and noticed how the motion seemed to disturb something invisible yet present, like drawing through thick honey that existed only at the boundary between air and water.

A rustling in the nearby sedge grass caught his attention. Three rabbits had emerged from their burrow and now sat in a perfect triangle formation, each one precisely the same distance from the others, their ears twitched in unison toward the spot where the light had danced. They remained motionless for exactly seven heartbeats, before bounding away in three different directions, each following one of the spiral paths his finger had traced moments before.

Egast sat back on his heels, staring at the now-ordinary water. The silver-scaled fish had vanished the moment the light appeared, leaving only ripples to mark their presence. He held the coalwood branch up to examine it in Lum's filtered light that streamed through the canopy above. The charred tip appeared unchanged, yet something within it hummed with a frequency he could almost hear.

A soft splash drew his attention back to the stream. One of the fish had returned, but this one moved differently than the others. Where its kin darted in quick, nervous bursts, this creature glided with deliberate purpose toward the spot where the water had glowed. It circled the area thrice before lifting its head above the surface and fixing Egast with an unblinking stare.

The fish opened and closed its mouth several times, as if testing the air, before sinking back beneath the surface and swimming away with the same unhurried grace. Egast dipped the branch again, but the water remained ordinary. Whatever had awakened in that moment had already passed, leaving him with more questions than answers about the changes stirring within both himself and the world around him.

Erik: "Its hide? ... Fine, but only the smallest one, boy."

Curious, he asked his father,

Egast: "Erik, could I have one of these cows?"

Erik paused in his work, straightening to his full height. His weathered hands gripped the fence post tighter, and his eyes narrowed as they fixed on his adopted son. The question hung in the air between them like smoke from a dying fire.

Erik: "One of my cows? What for?"

Egast: "I want to see what their hide is like."

The silence stretched between them. Erik's jaw worked as if chewing on words he could not quite swallow. His gaze shifted from Egast to the herd, then back again. Other villagers had spoken of the boy's strange expeditions into the forbidden woods, whispered of things that seemed to follow him home though none could say what. Even now, Erik noticed how the nearest cow had lifted its head and was staring directly at Egast with an intensity that made the hairs on his neck stand on end.

Erik: "Its hide? Fine, but only the smallest one, boy."

Erik turned away as he spoke those words, his massive frame hunching slightly as if the weight of agreement pressed down upon his shoulders. He had seen the way animals reacted to Egast, how they would cease their grazing when the boy approached, how birds would perch closer than natural caution should allow. There was something in Egast that called to the beasts, and Erik feared what might answer that call. The other villagers whispered of strange lights glimpsed through the forest canopy on Wakes when Egast wandered longest, of how the milk cows gave richer cream after the boy had walked among them.

As Erik's footsteps faded toward the village center, Egast remained by the fence, studying the herd with new purpose. The smallest cow, a mottled brown creature with patches of white along its flanks, had separated itself from the others and now stood directly before him. Its dark eyes held an intelligence that seemed almost expectant, as if it too understood the transaction that had just taken place. The other cattle had formed a loose circle around their smaller companion, their heads lowered in what might have been reverence or mourning.

Egast extended his hand toward the chosen cow, and the creature stepped forward without hesitation. As his palm made contact with the coarse fur between its ears, a subtle tremor passed through both boy and beast. The cow's breathing deepened, becoming rhythmic and peaceful, while warmth spread up Egast's arm, not the heat of fever, but something more akin to the gentle pull he felt when touching the coalwood branch. Around them, the other cattle began a low, harmonious lowing that seemed less like the ordinary sounds of their kind and more like a song of farewell.

The warmth in Egast's arm pulsed in rhythm with the cow's heartbeat, and for a moment his face went distant and still, his eyes unfocused, as though something beyond ordinary perception had taken hold of him. The sensation appeared overwhelming yet comforting, like glimpsing the vast network of connections that bound all living things together.

As the cow's eyes slowly closed, Egast whispered words that came from some deep well within him, though he had never learned them from any teacher. The other cattle fell silent as one, their song complete. When the chosen cow's breathing finally stilled, Egast's expression shifted, his brow smoothing, his posture settling into a kind of quiet stillness, as if something had passed through him and left him changed.

The village beyond the pasture continued its daily rhythm, unaware that something fundamental had shifted in the relationship between the boy and the living world. Erik's retreating figure grew smaller as he walked toward the clustered dwellings, his shoulders still bowed beneath an unspoken burden. Above them all, Lum's light filtered through a thin layer of clouds, casting everything in hues of amber and gold that made even the most mundane moments seem touched by ancient significance.

In the village square, the daily market was drawing to a close as merchants from neighboring settlements packed their remaining wares. A trader from Waterdale wrapped lengths of sea-kelp rope while muttering about the strange stillness that had settled over Moondor's cattle. Another, bearing the forest-scent of Tresor on his clothes, glanced repeatedly toward the pasture where Egast stood among the beasts. Many had noticed the boy's peculiar effect on animals during their visits, how their pack horses would crane their necks to watch him pass, how even the wildest hunting dogs would fall silent in his presence.

The Waterdale merchant secured his bundle with quick, nervous movements, eager to begin the journey home before the Leep brought deeper shadows to the unfamiliar roads. Yet his eyes lingered on the scene beyond the village edge, where the boy's small form seemed to command the attention of creatures that should have been indifferent to human affairs. Something was changing in Moondor, the traders agreed with wordless glances, and they would carry whispers of it back to their own peoples when they departed with the next Wake's light.

As the merchants gathered their final goods, one of them, a weather-worn woman from the northern settlements, paused beside her loaded cart. From within her traveling pack, she withdrew a small bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. Inside lay three feathers unlike any the traders had seen: each one shimmered with an inner light that pulsed gently, as if responding to some distant heartbeat. She had found them scattered along the forest paths during her journey to Moondor, always in groups of three, always arranged in perfect triangles.

The Tresor trader approached, his eyes widening as he recognized something significant about the feathers' pattern. In his homeland, the hunters spoke of ancient markers, signs left by creatures that moved between the world of flesh and the world of spirit. He had dismissed such tales as folklore, yet these feathers bore the exact spiral markings his grandmother had described in her stories of the time before memory. The two merchants exchanged no words, but both understood they had witnessed something that would reshape their understanding of the natural world.

Back in the pasture, Egast remained beside the still form of the cow as Lum's light began to soften toward the approaching Leep. The other cattle maintained their vigil, forming an unbroken circle that seemed to pulse with collective breath. As he prepared to begin his work, Egast noticed that the ground beneath the cow had changed. Where once ordinary grass had grown, now tiny crystalline formations pushed through the earth, each no larger than a grain of sand but gleaming with their own inner radiance. The crystals formed intricate patterns that spiraled outward from the cow's body, creating geometric designs that echoed the pathways he had felt pulsing through the creature's hide.

Egast knelt and touched one of the crystal formations with the tip of his finger. A gentle warmth traveled up his arm, carrying with it a sensation of profound completeness. The coalwood branch in his other hand began to glow faintly, responding to the magical resonance that now permeated the very ground around them. Whatever transformation was taking place here would change not only how he understood the materials he worked with, but how he understood the fundamental connections between all living things in their world.

As the crystalline formations continued to spread in their spiral patterns, Egast became aware of a new sound drifting across the pasture. From the direction of the village came a low, rhythmic chanting that seemed to pulse in harmony with the glowing crystals. The voices belonged to the village elders, though their words were too distant to distinguish clearly. Erik's voice could be heard among them, deeper and more resonant than the others, as if he too felt the pull of whatever force was awakening in the earth.

The remaining cattle began to move in slow, measured steps, each animal positioning itself at precise points around the growing crystal formations. Their hoofprints left faint impressions that glowed briefly before fading, creating a temporary map of pathways that connected each glimmering point. Egast realized that the animals were not simply bearing witness to this transformation, they were actively participating in it, their movements guided by an ancient knowledge that predated human understanding of the magical forces that composed their world.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the chanting ceased. The cattle stilled. The crystal formations ceased their spreading and held their patterns in silence, each facet catching Lum's amber light and scattering it in thin filaments across the grass. Egast sat motionless at the center of it all, his palms pressed flat against the earth, feeling the last tremors of the event pass through the ground like the final note of a song too vast to name.

After a long moment, he rose and took up the coalwood branch. He opened the crude hide book to a fresh page, smoothed the surface with his thumb, and began to write. He did not record what he had witnessed in the language of observation he used for the birds and the fish and the forest creatures. Instead the words that emerged were different, slower, pressed deeper into the skin. He wrote of the cow's warmth traveling up his arm. He wrote of the dual pull he felt in all things. He wrote of the cattle forming their circle without anyone to tell them to. He did not title the entry with the name of a creature. He left the heading blank.

Farther down the pasture, where the last of the crystal spirals had come to rest at the edge of the fence line, a single crow landed without sound. It turned its head once toward Egast, then once toward the village where Erik and the elders had fallen quiet. It did not caw. It sat for three long breaths, then lifted away into the pale haze above Moondor, climbing until it was only a dark point against the glow of Lum, and then nothing at all.

Egast closed the hide book and held it against his chest for a long moment. The crystalline formations at the fence line had already begun to dim, their light retreating into the earth as a tide retreats from stone, leaving behind no trace save a faint discoloration in the soil, pale and circular, like the memory of a fire long cold. He walked to the edge of the fence and crouched beside it, pressing two fingers into the discolored earth. It was warm still, and faintly resistant, as though the ground itself was reluctant to let go of what had passed through it.

The Leep was not yet upon Moondor, but the quality of Lum's light had shifted to that particular amber that preceded dimming, long and horizontal and heavy with the patience of the world. Egast rose and began walking toward the village, the hide book tucked beneath his arm and the coalwood branch held loosely at his side. He passed the market square where the last of the merchants had gone, leaving behind only the pressed marks of cart wheels in the dirt and a scattering of dried herbs that no one had thought worth collecting. He did not walk toward his father's house. He walked instead toward the far edge of the village, where the fence gave way to open ground and the open ground gave way to the first dark line of the forest. He stopped at that border and stood with his boots at the very boundary between cleared earth and root-broken soil, neither entering nor retreating.

From the direction of Erik's house, a door opened and closed. Heavy footsteps moved across packed earth, pausing when they reached the market square. Erik stood there in the amber half-light, his broad frame unmistakable even at distance. He did not call out. He looked at the boy standing at the forest's edge, and he looked at the fence line where the soil had gone pale in a wide ring, and he looked at the sky where the crow had long since vanished. His hands opened and closed at his sides. He turned back toward his house without a word, but at the threshold he stopped and set one large palm against the doorframe, holding it there for several Lumends before going inside.

The forest offered no further sound. Whatever had spoken from within the treeline kept its silence now, and the darkness between the trunks thickened with the patient indifference of old things that have learned to wait. A small wind moved along the forest floor and crossed the boundary into the cleared ground, carrying with it the smell of deep bark and turned earth and something beneath those, faint and mineral, like stone that has been warm for a very long time. Egast's fingers tightened on the hide book at his side. The blank heading of the last entry pressed against his palm through the cover.

He turned from the forest at last and walked back through the village toward the dwelling Erik had given him. The crystalline discoloration at the fence line was invisible now in the gathering dark, indistinguishable from ordinary soil. A person passing in the morning would see nothing to mark the place. Egast paused once to look back at it, standing still in the lane with Lum's dimming glow spread thin and red across the far curve of the world above. Then he walked on, and the lane was empty, and the village settled into its Leep.

He did not sleep when the Leep came fully down over Moondor. He sat instead at the low table in his dwelling with the hide book open before him and the coalwood branch resting across his knuckles, and he looked at the blank heading of the last entry for a long time without writing in it. The single tallow candle on the table burned without flickering, its light so steady it seemed less like combustion and more like a small decision the flame had made and intended to keep. Outside, the village made its ordinary Leep sounds: the settling of roof timbers, the distant low of cattle, the particular silence that fills a place when all its people have drawn inward to their rest.

Then, from beneath the table, a sound. Not loud. A slow and regular tapping, as of something small testing the underside of a plank with one deliberate finger. Egast did not move at first. He lowered his gaze to the table's edge and waited. The tapping came again, three times, then stopped. When he pulled the table away from the wall and crouched to look beneath it, he found only bare earth and the compressed dust of ordinary habitation. Yet the earth there was warm to the touch, the same deep and patient warmth he had felt at the fence line, and in the center of the bare patch a single small crystal had pushed itself up through the floor, no larger than a thumbnail, gleaming with a pale interior light that pulsed once when his finger neared it, then went dark and did not pulse again.

Egast sat back on his heels and studied the dark crystal for several Lumins. At last he took the coalwood branch and wrote something in the margin of the hide book, beside the blank-headed entry. He wrote only four words, small and pressed firmly into the skin. He did not write a name. He wrote a question, and left it there, and closed the book over it, and did not open it again before the Wake came.

From somewhere within the treeline, a low sound rose and faded. It was not wind, and it was not animal. It lasted no longer than two or three Lumends before the forest returned to its ordinary silence. Egast looked down at the hide book in his hands. The blank heading of the last entry he had written caught what remained of Lum's amber light, and for a moment the empty space above the words seemed less like an absence and more like a deliberate reservation, room left for a name not yet known.

The Wake came as it always did, Lum's brightening pressing through the gaps in the dwelling walls in long pale fingers that crossed the floor and climbed the far wall in silence. Egast had not moved from his place at the table. The tallow candle had burned to nothing, its wick a cold black thread in a shallow pool of hardened wax. The hide book remained closed under his hand, and the dark crystal beneath the table had not pulsed again through the full length of the Leep.

He rose when the brightening reached the table's edge and stood for a moment with both hands pressed flat against the wood, looking at the closed book without reaching for it. Then he took it, tucked it beneath his arm, and stepped outside into the early Wake. The village was stirring. Smoke rose from two cookfires. A child chased a dog through the lane without looking at him. The market square held only the pressed wheel-marks from the merchants of the previous Wake, already softening at their edges in the morning damp.

Egast walked to the well at the center of the village and drew water, and while he drank he looked toward the pasture fence. The pale ring in the soil was invisible from this distance, lost among ordinary shadow and grass. A single cow stood at the far end of the herd, apart from the others, its back to the village, its head lowered toward the ground at a point Egast could not precisely identify but did not need to. He watched it for a long while. It did not graze. It did not move. When at last one of Erik's farmhands approached the herd with feed, all the other cattle pressed forward in the ordinary way of hungry animals, and the lone cow at the far end turned and followed, and was indistinguishable from the rest.

Egast waited until the king had fully exhausted his telling before speaking again.

Egast: "And where might I find your person of magicks."

A memory surfaced unbidden as he asked it, one he had carried without examining since the day he first pressed his palms against the cow's hide in the pasture at Moondor. The animal's skin had smoothed beneath his hands in ways no tanning knowledge could account for. He had attributed the phenomenon to careful preparation, told himself it was nothing, and closed the hide book over the blank-headed entry without returning to the question pressed into its margin. Yet the cloaked person's words about auras and gods choosing their prophets had shaken something loose in him. The hide had known his hands before he knew what his hands could do. The cow had walked forward without being led. The cattle had formed their circle without being told. Whatever force now coursed through his blood had been present long before the dying tree in the forest had given it a name, and standing in the throne room of the first king of Farveal, Egast understood at last that the hides of animals were not passive materials but reservoirs, vessels in which the dual pull of Lum and surface remained impressed long after the creature that had felt it was gone. A wizard who understood that principle would be able to do far more than smooth rough leather. The creature's winter survival, the richness of the milk the cows gave after he walked among them, the way the chosen cow had stepped forward without prompting: these were not coincidences but evidence of something woven into the very fabric of living matter, something he had been touching his entire life without knowing he was touching it.

He cut the hide into squares and fashioned a rather crude, gaudy-looking book. Though his people already had a written language carved into stone, Egast became the first to put words on skin, using a branch from a coalwood tree, charred at the tip and used like ink.

Yet the making of the book had not been without strangeness. As Egast spread the hide flat upon the ground to cut his squares, the material had responded to his touch in ways he could not account for. Rough patches smoothed themselves beneath his palms. A long tear along one edge drew itself closed as his fingers passed over it, the fibers knitting together without needle or thread. He paused over this, pressing his hands flat and holding them still. The hide grew warm, warmer than Lum's filtered light and the ambient air could explain, and beneath that warmth he felt two distinct pulls moving through the material in opposite directions, one drawing toward some invisible center, one spreading outward toward the edges, the same dual sensation he knew from climbing tall trees but now present in a piece of dead skin laid flat upon the ground.

Egast lifted his hands and looked at his palms. Nothing had changed in their appearance. He set them down again, and again the hide responded, smoothing further, the warmth deepening. He sat back on his heels and stayed very still for a long moment. Then, with the deliberate care he gave to all observations worth recording, he pressed one fingertip to the surface and drew it slowly in a long line across the hide. Where his finger passed, a faint luminescence rose and faded, lasting no longer than a breath. He drew another line crossing the first. The glow returned at the intersection and held slightly longer before dimming.

He did not yet have words for what this meant. He set the phenomenon aside in the way he set aside things he could not yet explain, not dismissing it but marking it for return, the way a hunter marks a trail too faint to follow in failing light. He took up the coalwood branch and began to cut his squares.

Using the book and coalwood branch, Egast began documenting the animals he observed in the wild. It is thanks to him that many of that region's creatures were recorded and illustrated in his book, "The Natural Creatures of the World".

Orleus said to himself, "I see, so thought is how we perform magic. I imagine we must be very specific, otherwise we could end up with an unexpected result."

He said it loud enough that all the other boys heard it

Test paragraph from Claude.

The ancient tower stretched upward through layers of sedimentary rock, its crystalline walls pulsing with veins of amber light that seemed to breathe with the rhythm of distant magic. Carved spirals wound around its circumference, each groove filled with a different luminous substance, some flickering like captured lightning, others flowing like liquid light from the far city-dots that gleamed along the Spherve's curved surface.

At the tower's base, a figure in robes woven from transmuted copper threads paused before the great doors. Their elongated fingers traced the ancient glyphs that covered the entrance, each symbol responding with a soft chime that harmonized with the others to create a melody older than memory. The doors themselves were not made of any single material; they shifted constantly between states, sometimes appearing as polished obsidian, sometimes as crystallized wind, always maintaining their fundamental essence while expressing it through countless forms.

Beyond the threshold, heated voices echoed through chambers carved from living stone. Two figures dominated the great hall: Wizard Dump, their orange-tinged aura crackling with bombastic energy, and Wizard Lary, their measured stance radiating calculated power. Around them, the Castle's other inhabitants watched as these two prepared to compete for the ultimate position of authority over the realm's magical governance.

The assembled wizards formed loose clusters throughout the hall, their varied robes creating pools of color against the living stone walls. Some bore the deep crimson of the Fire Scholars, others the shifting blues of the Water Weavers, while a few wore the earth-brown garments of those who delved deepest into transmutation mysteries. Whispered conversations rippled through the gathering as ancient rivalries and fresh alliances shaped themselves around the coming contest.

Wizard Dump raised both hands, their voice booming across the chamber with magical amplification that made the crystal veins in the walls pulse brighter. The orange aura surrounding them flared like captured flame, casting dancing shadows that seemed to writhe with their own ambition.

Wizard Dump: "Fellow practitioners of the great arts, the time has come to choose leadership that will make our Castle magnificent again! Too long have we allowed our power to diminish while lesser magical institutions flourish across the Spherve's surface."

Wizard Lary stepped forward with measured precision, their own aura, a steady silver glow, creating a calm counterpoint to their rival's theatrical display. The assembled wizards shifted their attention between the two figures, sensing the weight of Cycles of preparation behind this moment.

Wizard Lary: "Experience and wisdom must guide our Castle's future. While grand promises echo pleasantly through these halls, true magical governance requires understanding the delicate balance between power and responsibility. I have served this institution through seven major transitions, weathering the great Lumstorm of the forty-third Cycle and the Transmutation Crisis that nearly shattered our foundations."

A murmur rippled through the Fire Scholars, while several Water Weavers nodded in recognition. Near the eastern alcove, an ancient wizard leaning heavily on a staff carved from crystallized time raised one gnarled hand. The gesture carried such authority that even the competing candidates paused their posturing.

Ancient Keeper Vorthak: "Let the trials begin according to the old ways. Three challenges shall determine who possesses not merely the loudest voice, but the deepest understanding of our craft."

The living stone beneath their feet responded to Vorthak's words, reshaping itself into three distinct platforms that rose from the chamber floor with grinding resonance. Each platform bore a different challenge carved into its surface: the first showed intricate geometric patterns that shifted like living puzzles, the second displayed a pool of swirling quicksilver that reflected not the chamber above but distant realms beyond the Spherve, and the third remained blank save for a single handprint pressed deep into the stone.

Wizard Dump strode toward the platforms with characteristic boldness, their orange aura flaring brighter as they approached the magical constructs. Behind them, Wizard Lary moved with calculated steps, silver light pooling around their feet where they walked. The assembled wizards pressed closer, forming a semicircle that allowed clear viewing of the trials while maintaining respectful distance from the ancient magic now awakening in the chamber.

From the copper-threaded figure near the entrance came a whispered observation that carried further than intended, reaching ears throughout the hall despite its quiet delivery.

Copper-Robed Observer: "The last time these trials were invoked, the Castle shook for seven Wakes afterward, and three entire libraries relocated themselves to the deepest vaults to escape the magical resonance."

The first platform's geometric patterns began to shift more rapidly as both candidates approached, the carved lines rearranging themselves into configurations that had not been seen since the founding of the Castle. Wizard Dump placed their palm against the surface, and immediately the patterns flared with orange light, responding to their touch with aggressive angular shapes that sliced through the air above the platform like crystallized ambition. The assembled wizards stepped back as sparks of transmuted energy scattered across the chamber floor, each spark transforming whatever it touched into gleaming metal fragments.

Wizard Lary waited for the initial display to settle before approaching their own section of the platform. Where Dump's touch had created chaos and spectacle, Lary's silver aura caused the patterns to flow like liquid geometry, each line connecting to the next in smooth transitions that seemed to solve the puzzle through patience rather than force. The contrast was not lost on the observers, particularly the Water Weavers, who recognized the disciplined approach of their own methodologies.

From the quicksilver pool on the second platform, distant images began to surface unbidden. Glimpses of other magical institutions across the Spherve flickered in the reflective surface like warnings or promises, showing towers that had fallen to hubris and academies that had thrived through careful stewardship. Ancient Keeper Vorthak's weathered face remained impassive, but his grip tightened on his temporal staff as the magical resonance filling the chamber stirred the old stone itself.

The third platform began to resonate with a deep harmonic tone that seemed to emanate from the depths of the Castle itself. The blank stone surface with its single handprint depression started to glow with soft white light, different from the orange and silver energies of the candidates. Several of the assembled wizards recognized the significance of this particular trial, for it was known as the Test of True Intent, where magical prowess meant nothing compared to the fundamental nature of one's ambitions.

Wizard Dump approached the glowing handprint with characteristic bravado, but hesitated for the first time since entering the chamber. Their orange aura flickered uncertainly as they studied the deceptively simple depression in the stone. Behind them, Wizard Lary observed this moment of doubt with careful attention, recognizing that whatever this trial demanded, it would require more than the theatrical displays that had carried them both to this point.

Copper-Robed Observer: "The handprint reads not what magic you possess, but what you would sacrifice to obtain what you seek. It has been known to reject candidates whose power far exceeded their wisdom."

The words hung in the air like a challenge, and several of the older wizards exchanged meaningful glances. Wizard Dump's orange aura dimmed to a sullen glow as they stared at the innocent-looking depression in the stone. Their fingers flexed and unflexed at their sides, the characteristic bravado wavering for the first time since the trials began.

From the cluster of Water Weavers came a barely audible whisper that nonetheless carried through the chamber's acoustic properties. One among them, bearing the deep blue robes marked with silver threading, leaned toward a companion whose garments shimmered with aquatic patterns.

Water Weaver Thessarian: "Master Caldris attempted this trial sixty Cycles past. The stone accepted his hand, then showed him visions of what his ambition would cost. He withdrew from consideration that very Wake and spent the remainder of his years tending the Memorial Gardens in the deepest vaults."

The quicksilver pool on the second platform began to churn more violently, its surface now reflecting not distant realms but fragments of possible futures. In its depths, shadowy images formed and dissolved like half-remembered dreams, showing glimpses of the Castle under different leadership, some scenes bright with prosperity, others dark with consequences yet unknown.

Wizard Dump pressed their palm against the handprint at last. The stone did not flare with orange brilliance as the geometric platform had. Instead it went utterly dark, drawing the warmth from the surrounding air as though the trial itself were holding breath. The assembled wizards fell silent. Even the Water Weavers ceased their murmuring. For seven long Lumins, the only sound in the chamber was the low harmonic tone rising through the floor, and the faint crystalline chiming of the entry glyphs still settling from the evening's arrivals.

Then the stone returned a color that no one present had a ready name for. It was neither orange nor silver. It pulsed twice, slow and deliberate, and went dark again. Ancient Keeper Vorthak lowered his gaze to the floor and turned the temporal staff between his palms three times, which was a gesture the oldest among the assembled recognized as reserved for moments when the old ways had rendered a verdict that would not be pleasant to speak aloud.

Wizard Lary did not move toward the third platform. They stood at the edge of the quicksilver pool instead, watching the images dissolve in the reflective surface, their silver aura held close and still around their shoulders like a cloak drawn against cold wind.

Ancient Keeper Vorthak raised his head at last. The temporal staff ceased its turning. He crossed the chamber with steps that left faint impressions in the living stone, each footfall accompanied by a brief harmonic pulse from somewhere far below, as though the Castle's foundations acknowledged his passage. He stopped between the two candidates and regarded the darkened third platform without touching it.

Ancient Keeper Vorthak: "The trial does not disqualify. It illuminates. In seven hundred Cycles of this Castle's keeping, only twice has the stone returned neither light nor darkness, but that unnamed color. Both times, the one who carried it went on to govern. Both times, the Castle itself was changed in ways no prior election had managed. Whether that is cause for celebration or mourning I leave to those who study the Memorial Gardens and read what is carved there."

The Copper-Robed Observer near the entrance had grown very still. The Water Weaver called Thessarian pressed both hands flat against the front of their robes, a gesture others near them mirrored without seeming to notice they were doing so. The quicksilver pool settled into a surface so smooth and unmoving it appeared solid, and in its stillness it reflected the two candidates with precise and equal clarity, side by side, neither one diminished.

Wizard Lary turned from the quicksilver pool at last. The silver aura had not changed in intensity or shape, but something in the quality of their stillness had shifted, the way a stone wall reads differently after rain than before it, the same stone, the same dimensions, yet altered by what had passed over it. They looked at the darkened third platform, then at Wizard Dump, then at Ancient Keeper Vorthak, and the looking carried no triumph and no concession, only the careful attention of one who has learned that the most important information arrives in the Lumends after a verdict, not during it.

Wizard Lary: "Then let the Castle's records show that both candidates stood before the third trial. Let them show what the stone returned. And let whoever reads those records in forty Cycles, or four hundred, understand that we were here on this Wake, in this chamber, and that we knew what the unnamed color meant and chose to govern anyway."

No one in the assembled hall moved to respond, not the Fire Scholars, not the Water Weavers, not the Copper-Robed Observer whose whispered words had carried so far beyond their intended reach. Ancient Keeper Vorthak regarded Wizard Lary for a long Lumin, the temporal staff quiet in his grip. Then he looked out across the gathered wizards with the expression of a figure who has read too many carvings in too many Memorial Gardens to be surprised by the weight a single sentence can carry, and who has learned, across the long Cycles, that the ones who speak that weight plainly are generally more dangerous than the ones who do not.

The living stone of the third platform had not returned to its prior blankness. It held that unnamed color still, neither brightening nor fading, only persisting in the way that certain truths persist after they have been spoken in a room: present in the air, absorbed into the walls, impossible to recall into silence. Several of the younger wizards near the back of the hall had begun to look at one another with the particular expression of those who have witnessed something they suspect they will spend many Cycles trying to accurately describe to those who were not present.

One of the Fire Scholars, a compact figure whose crimson robes bore the additional scarlet hem-markings of the Seventh Alcove, moved to stand beside the Copper-Robed Observer near the entrance. The two of them regarded the still quicksilver pool and the unchanged platform with the quiet focus of practitioners accustomed to studying phenomena that did not announce their own significance.

Fire Scholar Ondeth: "In the Memorial Gardens, the two carvings Vorthak spoke of, I have read them both. The first record names the change that followed as a catastrophe. The second names the same change as a restoration. They describe the same Cycles. The same events. The same Castle. I used to believe one account was mistaken. I have since stopped believing that."

The Copper-Robed Observer turned to look at Ondeth with the slow, measuring attention of one who has spent considerable time learning when to speak and when to let silence do the heavier work. The entry glyphs behind them had grown quiet at last, their earlier chiming fully settled, and the great doors stood as they always stood: between states, neither wholly one thing nor another.

Copper-Robed Observer: "Then perhaps the question worth asking is not which account is correct, but why the same Cycles required two contradictory truths to be carved at all. A catastrophe that is also a restoration does not resolve into one thing upon closer examination. It remains both. The Castle endured it either way, which tells us something about the Castle, and something about what endurance costs, though it tells us rather less about whether the cost was worth paying."

Ondeth did not answer immediately. Across the chamber, the unnamed color on the third platform continued its patient persistence, indifferent to the deliberations of those who stood before it. The living stone of the floor had long since absorbed the footprints Vorthak left in his crossing, smoothing them away with the quiet thoroughness it applied to all impressions, given sufficient time.

At the far end of the hall, where the living stone curved upward into the vaulted ceiling and the amber veins of the walls ran thickest, a figure who had spoken nothing throughout the entirety of the trials rose from a low bench. This was Wizard Maren, whose robes bore no school's color at all, only the undyed grey of raw fiber, worn with the unselfconscious ease of someone who had long ago ceased to regard garments as anything other than warmth. Maren was neither the oldest in the chamber nor the youngest, and had served the Castle in a capacity that no formal title had yet successfully described, something adjacent to memory-keeping, something adjacent to warning.

Maren crossed the hall without haste, passing between the candidates and the platforms without looking at either, and stopped before the quicksilver pool. The surface, which had been so still as to appear solid, responded to Maren's proximity by producing a single slow ripple that moved outward from no visible point of origin and dissipated at the pool's edge without returning. Maren studied this for a Lumin, then straightened and addressed no one in particular, which in that chamber, in that moment, was the same as addressing everyone.

Wizard Maren: "I have kept the Castle's memory for nineteen Cycles and I will tell you what I have observed in that time. The trials do not choose leaders. They reveal what the candidates carry into the room with them, which was already there before the stone was touched, before the quicksilver turned, before any of us arrived on this Wake. What happens next will not be decided by the platforms or the pool. It will be decided by what each person in this hall chooses to remember about what they have seen here, and what they choose, quietly and without ceremony, to forget."

The hall held that silence for long enough that the amber veins in the walls completed one full pulse cycle, their slow light moving from ceiling to floor and back again in the rhythmic fashion that older members of the Castle had long used as an informal measure of time when the weight of a moment made counting Lumins feel inadequate. Then, from the cluster of Earth-brown transmuters who had remained near the western alcove throughout the trials without contributing a single audible word, one figure separated from the rest. They were neither tall nor short, and they moved with the particular economy of someone who had spent a great many Cycles working with materials that punished carelessness: no gesture wasted, no step placed without consideration of what the floor might do in response.

This was Transmuter Gault, who held no seat on any council and sought none, and whose name appeared in the Castle's records most frequently in the footnotes of other practitioners' research rather than in any heading of their own. Gault stopped a measured distance from the quicksilver pool and looked not at the candidates, not at the platforms, but at the pool's single ripple, which had by now long since reached the edge and gone. The looking had the quality of someone checking that a door they expected to find open was in fact closed, and finding this neither surprising nor distressing, only confirmatory.

Transmuter Gault: "What Maren describes is accurate, and I would add only this: the Castle's memory is not the same thing as the Castle's record. Records are what we carve when we agree on what happened. Memory is what persists in the stone regardless of what we carve. In nineteen Cycles of keeping the one, Maren has also been accumulating the other, and those of us who work closely with stone know that eventually, given sufficient time and sufficient truth, the two become very difficult to hold separately."

The amber veins in the walls completed another slow pulse, and the unnamed color on the third platform shifted by no measurable degree, yet those nearest to it would later disagree about whether it had brightened or deepened. This was, in itself, a kind of answer to nothing and a kind of answer to everything.

Wizard Dump had not moved since Maren spoke. The orange aura, which had spent the better part of the evening filling whatever space it occupied with the comfortable authority of a fire that expects to be warmed by, had drawn inward until it sat close against the skin, less like captured flame and more like the embers left after the demonstrative burning is finished. Dump's gaze had settled on Transmuter Gault with the particular fixed quality of someone who has just been told something they already knew and had hoped, on some level, would not be said aloud in a room this full of people who would remember it.

Gault did not meet that gaze. Gault had already returned attention to the pool's edge where the ripple had been, regarding the unbroken surface with the same careful neutrality applied to everything else, as though the pool were simply another material with properties worth understanding, and the events of the Wake were simply another set of data to be worked into the record that stone keeps for itself, patient and indifferent to whatever the beings standing above it chose, in the end, to carve.

The great doors at the far end of the hall shifted in their perpetual state between forms, and through that uncertain threshold came a sound none of those assembled had heard before: not the chiming of the entry glyphs, not the low harmonic of the third platform, but something altogether smaller and more ordinary, the measured knock of a hand against a surface that could not quite decide what material it was. The knock landed three times, evenly spaced, with the patience of someone who had been waiting outside long enough to conclude that spectacular entrances were a courtesy owed to the door and not to anyone standing behind it.

The figure who entered wore no school color and carried no staff. They were young by the Castle's estimation, which is to say they had spent fewer Cycles within these halls than most present had spent thinking about what to do with the Cycles they had already accumulated. In one hand they carried a length of rough cord tied around a bundle of what appeared, on closer inspection, to be pages pressed from treated hide, covered edge to edge in a script that several of the older wizards recognized as the early notation system used before the Castle had settled on its current method of record-keeping. The figure crossed the threshold without hesitation, stopped at a distance from the gathered assembly that suggested neither deference nor challenge, only the practical calculation of someone who wanted to be heard without shouting, and looked between the two candidates, the darkened platform, and the still quicksilver pool with the composed attention of someone who had arrived expecting to find exactly this.

Transmuter Gault was the first to speak, not loudly, only clearly.

Transmuter Gault: "The archive sent you."

The figure with the hide-bundle did not confirm or deny this immediately. They set the bundle down on the living stone floor, which received it without reaction, and straightened to face the room.

Hide-Bundle Figure: "The archive sent the record. I only carried it. There is a distinction the archive was particular about me understanding before I left, and I think, given what I have walked into, that the distinction may be relevant to more people in this hall than just myself."