The cave was shallow, just enough to shield them from the wind. Cyril had gathered the brush himself. Miren lit it with a spark of Flow channeled through the edge of her dagger. Now it burned low and warm between them, the scent of smoke curling into the night.
Their first real fire as free people.
Neither spoke for a long time. Cyril watched the flames like they might answer the questions still echoing in his skull. Miren sat across from him, half-shrouded in her tattered cloak, her face unreadable, her blade still unsheathed in her lap.
Finally, he spoke.
"So… what now?"
Miren didn't move at first. Then her gaze flicked to him, slow and sharp.
"Now you learn where we are. What this world really is."
She pulled a faded map from her satchel. Flowlines marked old trade routes—not magical currents, just the bones of a world built on ambition, blood, and war.
She flattened it on a stone between them and tapped the center.
"This is where we are. The Godscar Wastes. No roads, no rulers. Just dead soil and ruined things."
"You think Dren was a monster? He was nothing. A speck. The world out there is carnivorous, Cyril. Everyone wants something—and no one's patient."
Then, she pointed north.
"Sunvault."
"Trade barons. Slavers. They run the obsidian ports, salt-forges, black markets. Flow? That's just a commodity to them. Leverage. They don't fight wars—they fund them."
"They don't need beasts. They breed debt."
Cyril scoffed. "Sounds familiar."
Her finger slid westward.
"The Braithborne Regency."
"Once noble. Now fractured. Warlords in silk. They sell bloodlines like stock. Their armies march because no one wants to be the next forgotten province."
"They eat their own before breakfast and call it tradition."
She shifted to the southern curve of the map.
"The Pact of Emberhold."
"Mercenary states. Cities behind walls built from old wars. Loyalty is coin. Honor is a receipt. They'll fight for anyone, even each other, if the silver's right."
"They're building something big. Someone's paying them—but no one knows who."
Cyril leaned forward. "And the east?"
The parchment there was warped, water-damaged. Miren hesitated.
"The Chorus."
"A collection of what's left when you rip out a kingdom's spine. Cultists, radicals, exiled blacksmiths, broken generals. They don't want to rule. They want to watch everything burn—slowly, beautifully."
"They believe the world's already dead. They just want it to rot properly."
Cyril stared at the map. Each name was a powder keg. Each region, a blade in someone's hand.
"You're saying they'd kill us just for existing?"
She didn't look up. "They wouldn't need a reason."
He sat back, breathing in the smoke. His bones still ached from the canyon. His knuckles scabbed, muscles bruised. But the idea of freedom felt real now, even if it was surrounded on all sides by knives.
"And us?" he asked.
"What are we?"
Miren finally looked up. Her expression wasn't cold—but it wasn't soft either.
"Right now? We're fugitives, rogue cultivators"
"But if we keep moving? Keep surviving?"
A pause.
"Then maybe we become something worse."
She let that hang in the air, letting the fire snap and hiss between them. Then she reached into her cloak and dropped something onto the stone beside the map.
A Shard-Spoil core. Cracked. Still glowing faintly.
"Whatever you are," she said,
"this world will try to own it, tax it, weaponize it—or kill it."
She stood, brushing ash off her knees.
"Tomorrow, we move east. The Chorus is fractured, but some of their outposts trade in information."
"Why?" Cyril asked.
"Why help me?"
She looked back at him, shadowed in firelight.
"Because power like yours doesn't stay hidden for long. And if someone's going to profit off it…"
She shrugged.
"I'd rather it be us."
She turned to walk away into the dark.
But Cyril wasn't ready to let the silence close yet. He glanced down at the core, then up at the stars beyond the cave mouth.
"You said I'm different," he said.
"Different how? I'm not stronger than you."
Miren paused.
"No," she said.
"Three major pulses in two days. I've seen prodigies. I've seen monsters. You're not either."
She paused.
"You're something else….unbound you don't channel Flow you command it. That shouldn't be possible."
He smiled.
"And someone said I wasn't a genius?"
Cyril jokingly boasted with his chest poked out.
"So what does that mean?"
She looked to the sky.
"It means there are places in this world you might reach that I never could."
She stepped back to the fire, her voice lower now—weighted.
"There's a story the Echoes used to whisper. A rumor. That beyond the mortal world, above all this—wars, factions, coin, corruption—there's another realm."
"A higher plane. A world of clarity."
She glanced at him.
"No taxes. No chains. No kings."
"Only power. The kind that's earned."
Cyril looked up again. The sky above seemed wider now. Deeper.
"You think it's real?"
"I think…"
She stopped herself. Then smiled, faintly.
"I think I'd like to find out."
And then she disappeared into the night again, leaving him with flame and map and sky.
Cyril sat alone with the fire, fingers resting near the cracked core.
Above the wars. Above the factions. Above the noise.
Another world.
It didn't feel like a fantasy.
It felt like a promise.
But so what?
If the world was going to come for him… then let it.
He'd meet it higher.