The schematics were drawn in blood and ink.
Not intentionally. The blood was mine, from when my finger slipped during an incantation, the ink half-dried and smudged across the page as my focus broke. Still, it added a certain authenticity to the sketches.
The room was filled with parchment. Diagrams. Mana flow charts. Failed constructs of bone-thread and soul-wire cluttered the floor. A burned framework sat by the hearth, still smoking faintly from its last failed ignition.
Lirae stood in the doorway, arms crossed, one brow raised. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
"You can say it," I muttered, not looking up.
"Say what? That you've lost your mind?"
I scratched a new line into the diagram, careful this time not to smear the stabilizer runes.
"Or that I'm building the first airborne soul-construct in Auronis?"
"With what army of artificers? What resources? You have string, half a bolt of enchanted silk, and your own blood."
"Also dragonbone splinters," I added. "Don't forget those."
She walked in, stepping over scorched fragments.
"You're trying to fly."
"Yes."
"Without training. Without clearance. Without a guildmark."
I glanced up. "Exactly."
Her lips tightened into something between fury and admiration. "You realize how many treaties this violates?"
"I'm exiled. Treaties don't apply to me."
She stood over the table now. Eyes scanning the chaotic runes, the structural anchor matrix. Her finger hovered above a rune cluster.
"This one's unstable," she said. "It'll collapse under lift pressure."
I didn't argue. She was right. I'd redrawn that segment five times. The soul-thread just wouldn't hold.
"Help me fix it," I said.
Lirae hesitated.
"Please."
That did it.
She exhaled, then pulled her gloves off.
We worked late. Hours passed, uncounted. Her handwriting was precise, elegant. Where I used intuition and raw mana, she moved with control—folding the ambient flow into clean lines. We didn't speak much. The magic filled the silence.
The System flickered once while we worked:
[Shared Conduit Detected: LIRAE]
[Warning: Emotional Sync Approaching Resonance Threshold]
[Soul Contract Initiation (Unintended) — ABORTING…]
[ERROR: Sync Interference — Source: Divine Encryption Present]
[Shutting Down Link…]
I flinched as the mana current snapped in my palm. Lirae hissed as the construct shimmered and died.
"Something blocked it," she said, flexing her fingers.
"The System tried to link us."
She didn't meet my eyes. "It can't."
"Why?"
"Because I already belong to someone."
My chest tightened.
"Not romantically," she added. "A contract. Political. Old. I can't speak its name."
"You're bound."
"I was."
She rolled her shoulders and stood.
"But he's dead."
I didn't ask more.
We rebuilt the core. This time with stabilizers from my mana and her lattice spellwork. By morning, the frame hovered six inches off the ground before failing.
Progress.
After breakfast—hard biscuits and tea we didn't finish—she led me to the north cliff.
"You still want to fly?"
"Yes."
She unfolded a cloak of lightweight, rune-etched silk. I blinked.
"You were hiding that?"
"I was saving it."
"For what?"
She looked out at the horizon.
"A moment that mattered."
We lashed the frame together, anchoring mana conduits into the glider limbs. My soul-thread wound tight into the steering veins. Her runes pulsed soft blue.
The wind rose.
I looked at her.
"Sure you want to come?"
She smirked. "Someone has to stop you from killing yourself."
We ran.
Jumped.
The first few seconds were a blur of wind and panic. The construct held. The mana thrummed beneath us. The air caught. Wings spread. Lift surged.
We flew.
High above the Wastes, the estate looked like a wound in the earth. The dead lands stretched on and on—cracked ridges, ruined temples, forgotten roads.
Lirae let out a soft gasp beside me.
"It's beautiful," she whispered.
I didn't speak. I couldn't. Not with the wind screaming past us and my heart beating like war drums.
Then I saw it.
A pillar of smoke.
Far to the northeast. Too black. Too wide. Rising from nowhere—from the forbidden zone known only in rumors.
Vareth's Hollow.
It was supposed to be sealed. Nothing lived there. No one survived.
"Caelen," Lirae said, voice tight.
"I see it."
The System activated again.
[New Location Marked: VARETH'S HOLLOW]
[Anomaly Detected: Divine Mana Signature — Dormant Entity Stirring]
[You have entered the outer boundary of a Slumbering God]
We began our descent in silence.
Back to the world.
Back to a fire that had no name.
Back to whatever waited beneath the smoke.