The steam was visible from afar.
White columns rising among the mountain rocks, slow, constant, like breathing.
Kira hadn’t exaggerated about the distance. Half a day from Khar’Seth, but uphill terrain the whole ti. The path wasn’t marked on any map Alex knew. It only existed because Kira knew where her feet were.
"Why isn’t it on the guild maps?" asked Raven.
"Ishi doesn’t want uninvited visitors." Kira sidestepped a root without looking at it. "Maps show what maps decide to show."
"And she decides that?"
"She and the terrain. The routes that lead here shift. Literally. If you don’t know the real path, you end up circling the sa kiloter without understanding why."
Emily looked back at the path they had taken.
"Did that happen to us?"
"Three tis in the last two kiloters." Kira kept walking. "I was going to tell you, but we made it anyway."
---
[Ishi Hot Springs, Crystal Mountains — Afternoon]
The hot springs appeared without prior announcent.
A turn in the path, a formation of tall rocks, and suddenly the terrain opened into a small valley completely different from everything around it.
Deep green where outside there was dry stone.
Five steaming pools at different heights, connected by natural channels.
Three cabins of dark wood built against the rock, simple, functional.
And silence.
As if the place had enough of its own and didn’t need noise to prove it.
"There are no animals," Alex noticed.
"Mountain beasts don’t co near." Kira dropped her pack on the ground. "The energy of this place repels them. Not with aggression. Just with sothing their instincts recognize as too pure to enter."
Grim raised his head.
His eye sockets scanning the valley.
"Old." A pause. "This place is very old."
"Older than the Temple," said Kira. "Older than most cities."
---
The old woman ca out of the central cabin.
A ter and a half. Silver hair that reached the ground, trailing slightly on the grass without tangling, as if the hair had its own instructions. Simple white clothing, no ornants. Bare feet on the damp stone.
Eyes the color of deep water.
She looked at them all in order.
Emily. Raven. Kira, with a small nod of mutual recognition. Grim, where she paused a second longer.
Then Alex.
"Ah," she said.
Just that, at first.
She walked toward him with short, sure steps. Stopped a ter away. Looked him up and down with the expression of soone reading small print.
"You’re carrying a heavy guest, boy."
"I know."
"No, you don’t know." Her voice was soft but not kind in the ordinary sense. It was precise. "You know you’re carrying it. You don’t know how much it still weighs." She tilted her head. "You will."
She turned without further explanation.
"Co in. The cabins at the ends are ready. The waters have schedules I’ll explain. Don’t touch the central pool without asking first."
She started walking back.
"My na is Ishi. You don’t need to thank anything yet. Thank when you leave, if you want."
---
[Later — cabins]
The cabins were small but sufficient.
Two beds each, a table, a window facing the pools. No luxuries. Everything necessary.
Ishi explained the schedules at the door of the central cabin.
Mornings: the north pool for those needing physical healing.
Afternoons: the east pool for magical energy and MP recovery.
Nights: the south pool, the hottest, free use.
The central pool, no assigned ti, only with permission.
"What’s the central one for?" asked Emily.
"For problems the other four don’t reach." The deep-water eyes glanced briefly toward Alex. "We’ll see if it’s necessary."
---
[Next day — Morning]
Alex entered the north pool alone.
The water was hotter than he expected. Not uncomfortable, but definitely hotter. Cloudy with minerals, slightly bluish, with a sll hard to describe. Clean, but ancient. Like the first day of rain after months of drought.
He subrged to his shoulders.
The Fragnt reacted imdiately.
Not with resistance. With sothing closer to discomfort, like an infected wound encountering antiseptic. A pressure inward, a forced adjustnt.
Alex waited.
He breathed.
The water did sothing he couldn’t quite na. It didn’t eliminate the Fragnt’s noise. It didn’t cut the connection. But it pushed it back. It gave him space between Alex’s thoughts and the Fragnt’s that normally occupied the sa place.
Like separating two fabrics that had stuck together.
Not perfect.
But more than he’d had in weeks.
[Corruption: 82% → 81.3%]
Slow.
Ishi had said it would take ti.
She was right.
---
It was Ishi who found Grim.
Or Grim who found Ishi. Hard to determine. The fact was that when Alex ca out of the pool, Grim and the old woman were sitting on a flat rock near the central channel, half a ter apart, looking at the water.
Not speaking.
Alex stopped at a distance.
Ishi spoke first, without turning her head.
"The Core. It’s been a long ti since I’ve seen one of yours."
Grim looked at her.
"You know ?"
"I know what you were." Ishi kept looking at the water. "You are not the Reaper. You are his heart, separated. What remained when the gods dismantled you." A pause. "The difference matters."
"Why?"
"Because the Reaper was what it did. You are what it was before doing." Ishi tilted her head slightly. "That has more possibilities."
Grim didn’t answer imdiately.
His eye sockets looked at the water too.
"I don’t rember well what I was."
"I know. Fragnts don’t rember everything for no reason. They rember in pieces that have no order." Ishi stood with the ease of soone weightless. "But they rember. That’s enough for now."
She went toward the central cabin.
Grim kept looking at the water.
Alex didn’t interrupt.
---
That night, with the group settled and the mountain completely still, Alex and Grim sat outside the cabin.
The stars, with no city nearby to compete, were more than Alex rembered ever seeing.
"What did she really say to you?" Alex asked.
"What she already said." Pause. "And that the mory fragnts I have now aren’t dangerous. They’re just... background noise of what I was."
"Background noise... does it bother you?"
"It’s confusing." Grim considered. "Can I show you?"
Alex hadn’t expected that.
"Can you do that?"
"Since the Manifestation. I don’t know how exactly. But I think so."
Alex nodded.
---
[Alex’s Mind]
He didn’t know how to describe it.
It wasn’t clear visions.
It was more like mories of his own that weren’t his. Sensations without context. Images without fra.
A field that extended infinitely in all directions, no visible horizon.
Millions of small lights moving slowly, like plankton in dark water. Souls. Alex knew it without anyone explaining.
A hand harvesting them. Without violence. Without choosing which ones and which not. All of them, eventually.
The feeling of being the oldest thing anywhere you arrived.
And then, more recent, more blurred, the feeling of being divided. Not destroyed. Divided. Seven tis. In seven different directions.
And silence.
A very long silence.
And then a ceremony. A nervous student. A companion that materialized amid laughter.
And a na.
Grim.
---
Alex ca out of the mory with his eyes open.
Grim was looking at him.
"Confusing," he said. "Yes?"
"Yeah." Alex processed. "The small lights, were they souls?"
"I think so."
"You harvested them all? Without distinction?"
"Without distinction." A long pause. "It wasn’t cruelty. It was function. Like breathing."
"And now?"
Grim took ti to answer.
"Now I know who I don’t want to harvest." His eye sockets looked toward the cabins where the rest of the team slept. "That is different."
Alex looked at the stars.
The Fragnt murmured softly. Softer than in days.
The waters were doing their work slowly.
[Corruption: 81.3% → 80.5%] (first full night)
"Grim."
"Yes?"
"Thank you for showing that."
Grim didn’t answer with words.
He just settled a little closer on the rock.
Enough.
User Comments
0 comments from readers