Dawn seeped across the sky in slow golden brushstrokes, washing over the broken rooftops and cracked domes of the west quarter. The Crucible vault now lay sealed beneath layers of stone and root—silent, dormant, its pulse no longer echoing through the bones of the city.
They had won. But it didn’t feel like triumph.
Pag lay stretched across a cot in what had once been a merchant’s gallery—now hastily converted into a field infirmary. The scent of healing tinctures mixed with old dust and burnt threadwax. A fresh set of linen wrappings bound his chest, clean but blood-spotted. He stared at the cracked ceiling, where light played through a broken windowpane, drawing glyph-shaped shadows across the floor.
A soft rustle of movement announced Toula before she spoke.
“How’s the pain?”
Pag blinked slowly. “Manageable. Or maybe the numbness finally caught up.”
She sat beside him, tail curling around her legs. Her armor was scorched in places, one shoulder still smeared with ash. “You should’ve let us handle him.”
Pag’s mouth tugged into something not quite a smile. “You did. You bought me the opening. I just… didn’t close it fast enough.”
Andromeda entered next, carrying a makeshift map table—stitched canvas spread over old crates. She laid the transcriptor crystal on the surface and activated it. A projection shimmered into view: Kyrbane, overlaid with Quang-encoded glyphs and anchor points.
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“It’s not just Kyrbane,” she said grimly. “This map shows three more Crucibles. Smaller ones. Regional. One in Soohan’s salt flats. Another somewhere in the Verdant Caldera. The third—hidden inside the Arcane Core itself.”
Pag sat up too fast and winced. “They’re all connected?”
“They form a network,” Maverick said as he joined them, flipping through notes. “And it’s not defensive. It’s extractive. Pillowhorror and the Quang weren’t just here to rewrite Kyrbane—they’re building a lattice of cultural overwrite nodes.”
“Ghostwriting history,” Toula murmured. “Turning memory into a weapon.”
Pag looked between them, heart heavy. “So what do we do? Go back to the Arcane Core, report what we found? Or…”
“Or we go after Pillowhorror directly,” Andromeda said.
Silence settled over them like ash.
“We know where he’s heading,” Maverick added. “This symbol here—” he pointed to the Caldera mark, “—that’s a Lunar Gate. He’ll use it to reach the anchor beneath the Verdant Crucible before anyone can react.”
“Or,” Toula said slowly, “we forget him and go after the relics he doesn’t know about yet. Cut off his tools. Buy time.”
They all looked to Pag.
He hadn’t earned leadership, not officially. But it was clear now: this thread followed him.
He rubbed his thumb across the Oracle fragment resting against his collarbone, the cool crystal pulsing softly in sync with the Crucible’s faint resonance.
“We can’t be everywhere,” he said finally. “But we can choose what matters first.”
He looked at each of them in turn.
“If we return to the Arcane Core, we secure allies, resources, context. But we also give Pillowhorror time to move freely.”
“If we chase him to the Verdant Caldera, we strike while he’s weak—but risk getting cut off, isolated.”
“And if we go after the lesser relics… maybe we break his lattice before it’s finished. But we’re always one step behind.”
A pause.
Then Pag inhaled deeply, sat up straighter, and met their eyes.
“So. What do we choose?”
>[Return to Arcane Core] – Rally allies, access ancient libraries, and warn the governing magisters.<
>[Pursue Pillowhorror] – Intercept at Verdant Caldera. High risk. Potential confrontation.<
>[Hunt the Relics] – Travel to isolated memory sites. Disrupt the Quang’s foundation before it solidifies.<
>Current Party Level: 26
Recommended Level for Each Path: 28+<