Syleena sat on her knees staring into the darkness, her expression completely blank. She seemed entirely unaware of her surroundings.
Rocks and dirt crunched beneath Kael's boots as he walked up to her.
'Soul damage?'
There was no visible physical harm, but her consciousness had been severed from his inner realm so abruptly he couldn't be certain what that had cost her.
She didn't react when his fingers wrapped around her throat.
He could kill her. He was certain of that.
But was that what he wanted?
Kael had never held a grudge. Not once, across everything he had lived through. And the reason wasn't complicated or noble. It wasn't mercy and it wasn't weakness. It was something closer to logic. A grudge was a debt you kept paying long after the original transaction had ended, carrying the weight of someone else's actions forward into every moment that followed. It cost you. It changed nothing about what had already happened. It was, by any honest measure, a waste.
What Syleena had done was not a betrayal in any sense that demanded a response. She had seen an opportunity and moved toward it without hesitation or sentiment. She had used every tool available to her in pursuit of something she wanted.
He would have done exactly the same.
That wasn't something to resent. If anything it was something close to recognition. Of all the people he had encountered since arriving in Velthoria, very few had shown him what she just had. The willingness to act completely true to herself regardless of consequence.
And besides.
He knew it.
The most powerful thing a Luminaire possessed, the very thing they would kill to protect and advance, was the one thing he no longer had. A soulbound mote.
A Luminaire without a soulbound mote was unheard of. It was not simply a powerful mote. It was woven into the nature of what a Luminaire was, growing as they grew, tied so closely to the soul that if one perished the other followed
On a theoretical and fundamental level a Luminaire without a soulbound mote should not be able to exist.
And yet here he was.
But just because he could live without them didn't mean he wanted to.
And Syleena had exactly what he needed.
Her soulbound motes. The ability to move through the world unnoticed, and to reach into the thoughts of others and reshape them. The thought alone was enough to give him pause.
In their own way, her soulbound motes were no less remarkable than his had been.
His fingers twitched against her skin.
Her value alive still outweighed her death. And even if he wanted to attempt claiming her soulbound motes he couldn't. Not yet. He was still too unfamiliar with the eye, and he had no motes of his own to work with.
Swoosh.
Kael's grip faltered. His head snapped to the side as a black spear tore out of the darkness and punched straight through his skull with a sickening crack.
Grey matter bloomed outward. Then tendrils erupted from the wound before it had finished opening fully, wrapping themselves around everything that had escaped and drawing it back in with those wet, familiar sounds.
Before the spear had reached the other side of the cave, Kael's head had already sealed itself closed.
"Ah."
He stumbled back several steps and clamped a hand over his skull.
He was completely disoriented. One moment he had held Syleena by the throat. Then his mind had gone entirely blank, for something less than a heartbeat. And now he was here.
"What's going on?"
A sharp pulsating pain came and went in the same instant as two hundred thousand Thoughts were consumed in a single sweep.
'I see… The primordial eye must have healed a wound I didn't even register.'
He turned, his mind already working.
From this one exchange he had learned more about the eye than weeks of careful observation had managed to produce.
Two things specifically.
The first was that he had no control over when or what it healed, and that its regeneration had limits. His missing arm was evidence enough of that. Whatever the eye could and couldn't rebuild, a completely absent limb apparently fell outside its reach.
The second was that the moment he sustained damage the eye moved on instinct, without consultation, without any consideration of his current circumstances or the resources it consumed in the process.
A silent scoff escaped him.
He could already see both sides of that.
"Don't touch her."
The voice was low and cold. A moment later Torin stepped out of the darkness.
His brows drew together.
'I'm certain I hit him.' Torin thought.
Hair swayed as Kael turned toward him.
Torin closed the distance in a few steps. When he spoke again something had shifted in his voice.
"Kael?" The confusion was genuine. "What have you done? Why are you rank one again?"
The question landed before Kael had even registered it himself.
He wasn't suppressing his rank currently, and yet.
'What?'
He sensed it now. A rank one aura, emanating from him as naturally as breathing.
'How? How is this possible?'
His soul was stronger and brighter than anything he had ever read about. His river of Will moved with the force of a rank four current. His Thought capacity sat at four hundred thousand. By every measure that should have mattered, he had never been stronger.
So why was his presence that of a rank one?
His mind churned.
Was it because his soul had shattered so completely and been remade? But Luminaire aura was supposed to be a reflection of the inner realm. The stronger the inner realm, the stronger the aura. That had always been his understanding. The more he pulled at it now the less certain he became. He wasn't even sure anymore what Luminaire aura actually measured, or whether he had ever truly understood it.
Torin walked over to Aven, took one of the javelins from the ground, and drove it through his chest without a second thought.
Blood soaked through his clothes slowly, then he collapsed onto the dirt.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The King Mountain Troll emerged from the darkness, its shadow swallowing the space like a lighthouse blotting out the sky. A tree swung down with it, carrying enough force to end whatever it found.
Torin's eyes widened.
He rushed to Syleena and spread his wings over her like a shield.
The tree came down with crushing force and shattered on impact. Splinters tore through his wings before he could pull them back.
"Kael!" he groaned.
'It has gained new motes.'
Kael's eyes sharpened.
Motes were naturally drawn to beasts and Dreadborne alike, seeking a stable inner realm to inhabit in exchange for their abilities. The King Mountain Troll was no different. It appeared to have acquired something powerful enough to conceal its presence entirely until it was already within striking distance.
Torin coughed blood. His soulbound mote had taken damage.
"I don't know what you did to Syleena but get her out of here. Somewhere safe."
Kael almost laughed. The hypocrisy!
This was the man who had just tried to kill him. Twice.
"I can't."
Kael said.
Torin's jaw tightened.
"What?"
"I would need to climb out with her on my back. I have one arm, as you can see."
Torin barely had time to react before another swing came from the side. A thunderclap rang out as a second tree exploded against him.
"Then carry her. The Troll seems to be ignoring your presence entirely. Take her. I'll handle this."
Kael's gaze remained cold.
'Can it sense Syleena or has she still deactivated them? Does it have a sensory mote?''
At this moment he couldn't help but be mildly surprised that the Lure mote even had managed to dull its senses long enough for him to attempt the refinement at all.
Torin twisted and hurled a javelin. Sparks erupted where it struck a defensive mote, illuminating the Troll's features for a single moment before the darkness swallowed everything again.
"Curses—"
"Fly me and Syleena up and I'll carry her to safety."
"Not possible. This troll isn't normal." He said, flapping his broken wings as if to illustrate the point.
Kael unbuttoned his coat and flipped it around, one arm still tucked inside.
For the first time Kael watched Torin's composure begin to fracture.
Taking advantage of his broken form and fractured focus, Kael closed the distance and whipped the empty coat sleeve around Torin's throat, grabbing it firm.
"What are you doing." Torin hissed, snapping a wing upward to block another tree coming down on them.
"Fly me out of here."
"I told you I can't."
"Bummer."
Kael twisted his leg around Torin's and pulled down on the coat hard.
Torin buckled backward, grabbing at the sleeve with both hands.
"Release me!" He rasped. "Another one is—"
The Troll brought its boulder-sized fist down against them. Torin's knees buckled. Raven black feathers exploded into the air and a mouthful of blood left him.
Then from every side, black javelins fell.
They tore through Kael's entire body, punching holes through flesh and bone, flesh scattering outward before the tendrils moved, pulling everything back into place.
There was no way to kill Torin in an honest one on one. But it didn't have to be one.
Torin struggled desperately to pull Kael away from Syleena, twisting and reaching in a frantic attempt to tear him loose. Kael held on with everything the Golden Horned mote could still give.
Torin dropped to one knee, teeth locked together.
He found a nearby rock and drove Kael against it. Again. Again. Then another mountain of a fist came down from above.
"UGHH."
He raised his wings to take it.
The entire wing fractured. Sparks of gold scattered into the dark. A gurgle followed as blood began filling his lungs and climbing into his mouth, as he stumbled onto his back, Kael under him.
"Die." Kael said quietly from behind him.
There was nothing he could do to break through Torin's defences, but he didn't have to. Forced to absorb blows for Syleena's paralysed body and unable to fly, all Kael had to do was restrict his movement until dodging became impossible.
The Troll clamped its fists together and brought them down.
Even with Torin absorbing the bulk of it, sharp cracks rang out as every bone in Kael's body snapped and sealed itself back together in the same motion.
Kael coughed and pulled the coat tighter, feeling it cinch further around Torin's throat.
Broken rasps. Breathing had started to become a struggle for him.
"Get off." Torin raised his head and brought it down hard. Kael's nose snapped, then straightened before the pain had finished arriving.
Kael pushed with his legs, dragging them both across the ground until a sharp branch jutting from the dirt sat snugly between his shoulder blades. Then he pulled the coat harder than he thought his arm could manage.
"Mpfhh." Whatever Torin tried to say didn't make it out.
Dirt exploded upward as the fist came down, driving the branch straight through Kael's chest and out through Torin above him.
Torin's hand found the wood and grabbed it, but there was no strength behind it.
Kael fought for breath until his lungs had healed enough to hold air
Feeling Torin's body beginning to slump, he released the coat and shifted his arm around his neck, tucking Torin's head beneath his shoulder.
He drove his hip upward and pulled down with everything he had.
Air hissed through his clenched teeth as he pulled harder, the branch dragging through his chest as his body arched. Icy pain screamed up his spine.
Then a crack… and then another.
Then a sequence of them, vertebrae surrendering one after the other like bubble wrap pulled tight, until Kael's body had arched completely and Torin's neck had given everything it had to give.
Kael's arm fell to his side. He stared up into the empty dark above him.
He pushed Torin off and pulled himself free of the branch. The chest wound already sealed by the time he reached Syleena. He grabbed the collar of her coat and began dragging her away.
Behind them the Troll continued driving its fists down into Torin's corpse, unaware that the threat was already long dead.
With some effort Kael worked Syleena's body flush against his and tied his coat around them both, securing her in place.
Then he began to climb.
He gripped the rock hard enough for it to split his skin, and used that grip to haul himself upward. By the time he reached for the next hold the wounds had already closed.