Lucien remained still.
The figures below spoke.
Their language was unfamiliar.There was no cadence he recognized and no roots he could imdiately trace to any known linguistic families of the Thousand Races. The language was dense, heavy with consonants.
Yet their expressions told a story even before aning did.
Tension pulled their features tight. Their shoulders hunched and their thick, mineral layered hands kept drifting toward tools that looked more like survival implents than weapons.
They were afraid. Not in a panicked way, but in the exhausted manner of those who had been afraid for too long.
Lucien listened.
He did not attempt to force comprehension.
Instead, he observed structure.
Language was not magic. It was pattern.
Repetition appeared quickly. Certain sounds clustered around monts of emphasis. Others softened when speakers deferred or hesitated. Sentence length shifted with urgency. The sa guttural syllables resurfaced whenever their gazes flicked toward the distant crater.
Perfect Calculation allowed Lucien to isolate patterns within the language, focusing on phones that likely denoted intent, action, and threat.
His photographic mory pieced the dialogue together in layers, replaying earlier conversations and aligning them with tone, posture, and context as new words erged.
aning began to surface.
Not fluently.
But enough.
"...too close..."
"...again... like before..."
"...if they noticed..."
"...hide—hide deeper..."
Lucien’s eyes narrowed slightly.
They were talking about the impact.
About the crater.
And they were afraid of being found.
One of them gestured sharply toward the horizon. Another responded with a harsh, broken phrase that repeated a term Lucien had already isolated as a proper noun.
A race na.
A na he knew.
The Alloykin Race.
Lucien’s jaw tightened.
They were one of the Thousand Races, a lineage born from human flesh intertwined with tallic monsters.
By refining and absorbing the essence of tals and minerals, they tempered their own bodies. The substance chosen for refinent did not rely reinforce them. It beca part of them.
If an Alloykin refined bronze, then bronze would answer as flesh. Their bodies could shift between living tissue and hardened tal at will, retaining the appearance and flexibility of ordinary flesh until strength was required.
The more material they successfully integrated, the denser and more resilient their bodies beca.
Lucien had encountered their kind before.
So of the monks from the Silent Monastery of the Ninth Bell belonged to this lineage. He rembered the youngest among them clearly, the bronze bodied monk he had faced before entering the ruins.
Yet Lucien was certain of one thing. The monastery itself had no hand in what was happening here.
He narrowed his focus further.
Understanding sharpened.
"...if it is them..."
"...they will take more..."
"...the world cannot bear it..."
"...we cannot either..."
A familiar heat coiled in Lucien’s chest.
’So this was not a coincidence.’
This world was rich.
It held minerals of unusual nature, rare enough to draw the attention of even the Alloykin race.
And these natives were the only ones capable of extracting them.
Lucien activated INSPECT.
Status panels unfolded before his eyes.
There it was.
The na of their race.
Lithren.
He pressed it and its description expanded.
...
Understanding settled into place.
"So that’s the truth," Lucien murmured.
He released a quiet breath.
The Lithren were bound to this planet at a fundantal level. Their physiology did not rely inhabit the world, it responded to it. As mana thinned, flesh hardened. As elental balance collapsed, skin mineralized. Their bodies mirrored the condition of the land they lived upon.
Millennia of extraction had bled the planet dry.
The world had turned to stone.
And the Lithren had followed.
Lucien listened to them further.
The fragnts grew clearer.
"...those who stayed..."
"...are in danger..."
"...no return..."
"...we ran because we still can..."
They were all rely mortals.
If the extraction continued, the Lithren would lose even the ability to move. Their adaptation would reach its final stage, completing the transformation that had already begun. Their bodies would fuse with the land itself, sealed into the terrain permanently.
They would beco living strata, a breathing ore.
Bitterness surfaced within Lucien.
This was enslavent dressed as necessity. Exploitation justified by distance.
The Alloykin were no different from the Varkhaals and the Nephralis.
Perhaps the only difference was scale.
And perhaps audacity.
Because this was not the Big World.
No authority reached this far. No rules stood watch over this place.
Here, the universe simply looked away.
Lucien watched from the shadows as the Lithren argued in hushed, fractured tones. Whether to flee again. Whether to risk staying. Whether the crater ant discovery.
They were deciding how to survive another day.
Lucien sighed.
His understanding was incomplete.
But it was sufficient.
A world stripped bare.
A mortal race pushed past endurance.
And a Thousand Race treating an entire planet as a mine.
Lucien closed his eyes.
For now, the choice lay with him.
Just then...
The Lithren’s voices shifted.
The sharp urgency faded, replaced by sothing heavier.
"...how is Rurik..."
"...still not speaking much..."
"...after the leader... it is difficult..."
"...his spirit has not recovered..."
Another voice answered, lower.
"...he blas himself..."
"...says his work failed..."
"...says the leader died because of him..."
Lucien’s gaze narrowed.
Regret had settled into their expressions.
After a brief exchange, the group moved.
Lucien followed.
They descended into the mountain through a narrow fissure that vanished behind them once they passed. The entrance sealed itself naturally. Stone slid into place as if the mountain had learned how to hide its own wounds.
Inside, the world changed.
The cave opened into a vast hollow lit by veins of glowing minerals embedded in the walls. Soft blues and pale ambers reflected off crystalline surfaces, casting gentle light that did not flicker. The illumination was natural, steady, and strangely calming.
This was not a crude refuge.
It was a settlent.
The Lithren moved with familiarity, stepping around piles scattered across the ground.
At first glance, it looked like debris. Broken fras. Twisted plates. Shattered limbs of tal and crystal.
Lucien’s steps slowed.
He looked again.
These were not scraps.
They were constructs. Incomplete chanisms lay half assembled. So were shattered beyond use. Others showed signs of repeated repair.
There were articulated joints, reinforced cores, and etched channels for energy flow. Designs overlapped and evolved across the floor, iteration layered upon iteration.
Lucien felt a jolt of surprise.
This world’s mana density was thin. Its technology should have been primitive.
And yet—
"These are engineered," Lucien thought. "Not crude."
The Lithren passed through it all without comnt.
They entered a deeper chamber.
Lucien followed.
In the far corner of the chamber sat a young Lithren.
Rurik.
He was slumped against the stone wall, knees drawn close to his chest. Mineral plates along his arms were thinner than those of the others, their edges were rough and uneven. His hands rested limply at his sides.
Around him lay more constructs.
These were more complete.
Humanoid fras. Articulated limbs. Compact cores etched with careful precision. So resembled crude automatons. Others were clearly designed as weapons or shields. All of them bore signs of desperate refinent.
The Lithren approached him slowly.
"...Rurik..."
"...you should eat..."
"...you have not moved..."
One of them knelt beside him.
"...your creations saved many..."
"...without them... we would have lost more..."
Rurik did not look up.
Lucien watched closely.
This was not despair alone.
This was collapse.
Then Rurik laughed.
It was sharp. Broken.
"Weapons?" he spat. The words were rough and uneven. "Creations?"
He pushed himself upright in a sudden motion.
"This?" He kicked a construct aside. It struck the wall and fell apart. "This is junk."
Another kick sent a partially assembled automaton crashing to the ground.
"I am junk."
His voice cracked.
"I am sorry... Leader."
The Lithren froze.
Rurik’s fists trembled as he lashed out again, striking tal and crystal without care. Pieces scattered across the floor. Sparks flared and died.
The others did not stop him.
They only watched, grief etched into every hardened face.
Lucien listened.
"...before... he talked of freedom..."
"...said we would fight back..."
"...we thought it was a dream..."
"...a young one’s fire..."
"...but he built things..."
"...things that worked..."
"...things that surprised even us..."
Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
Rurik had not been delusional.
He had been brilliant.
The voices continued, heavy with mory.
"...he attacked the enemies..."
"...small raids..."
"...sotis he brought people back..."
"...then one day..."
"...the Alloykin ambush..."
The word carried weight.
Lucien felt it settle in his chest.
"...his construct... destroyed instantly..."
"...they did not even slow..."
"...the leader used the heirloom..."
Lucien’s attention sharpened.
"...he protected Rurik..."
"...threw him back here..."
"...said nothing..."
The chamber fell silent.
"...the leader never returned..."
Rurik’s shoulders shook.
Lucien understood then.
The young Lithren had not lost because he failed.
He had survived.
And survival was the cri he could not forgive himself for.
The others approached him again, gently this ti.
"...you are not wrong to dream..."
"...you are not wrong to build..."
Rurik did not answer.
His eyes were empty, fixed on the shattered remains of what he once believed could change the world.
Lucien remained unseen.
But sothing inside him shifted.
This was not blind rebellion.
This was ingenuity crushed by inevitability.
A mortal who had reached beyond what his world allowed, only to be pulled back by forces that never needed to try.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
The choice before him grew heavier. And clearer.
Then, he stepped forward and revealed himself.
User Comments
0 comments from readers