Chapter 42

  The vault’s stone door closed shut behind him, sealing its secrets once more. Raime lingered in the corridor for a breath, his palm still pressed to the cold seam, as though part of him feared it might swing open again of its own accord. The items inside were too precious to lose for a stupid mistake. Nothing moved. Only the quiet pulse of the echoes in the walls gave the place life.

  He turned, body heavier than before, and made his way toward his chamber. His footsteps whispered against the polished stone, the sound oddly loud in the silence. For the first time since entering this temple, the familiar halls felt less like a sanctuary and more like a cage.

  The monk’s cell awaited him as it always had—spartan, silent, carved from the same dark grey stone—but tonight it carried the weight of return. Raime put his belongings on the stone desk, then lowered himself onto the slab of a bed and sat still, hunched forward, palms braced on his thighs.

  He meant to breathe, to steady himself, to fall into the practiced rhythms of control. Instead, his hands trembled. Tremors ran up his arms, into his shoulders. He pressed his palms against the edge of the bed until the stone cracked beneath his fingers, flakes crumbling onto the floor. He stared at the ruins of his own lack of restraint, chest tight.

  All that training, all the attributes—and still, his body betrayed him. His mind too. He’d been held, suspended in the guardian’s serenity like a moth caught in amber. He’d been a heartbeat away from losing himself entirely to the chained eye. And if not for that other voice—he would not be here at all.

  Saved. Again.

  First by the Administrator’s intervention, now by some nameless guy speaking from the chains.

  His jaw clenched, the thought coiling inside him like bile. When will I stop being a plaything? A tool? A pawn shuffled across a board I can’t even see?

  Fear lanced through the anger. His hands shook harder. His breath came shallow, uneven. He bent forward, elbows on knees, and forced his lungs to draw air, forced his ribs to expand. It didn’t help. The stone beneath his grip shattered again, the dust clinging to his damp palms.

  A mess of emotions churned in him—rage, fear, shame—and none of the clarity he had trained for. None of the control his attributes promised. His will felt frayed, the edges burned away.

  I was almost theirs.

  He closed his eyes, dragged air into his chest, and held it until his ribs ached. Then let it out slow, a shaking exhale. The sound broke the silence of the room.

  The capital. The thought rose unbidden, dark and heavy. He didn’t know what waited there, only that both the System and the chains’ voice pushed him toward it. His tutorial quest had pointed him in that direction long before tonight. Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

  He wanted to laugh, but it came out hollow. Everything feels like a conspiracy now.

  Still, the capital called. It was a long time coming. Well not that long, he thought. But it felt like years since his first days in the Rift. He thought of leaving this place, the temple that had become something like a home in the Rift, a place where he had carved a piece of order out of the chaos. Leaving it meant stepping into the unknown again, with nothing but suspicion as a companion.

  And the voice… what if it was worse than the eye?

  He flinched at the memory—the violet enormity, the chains biting into its form, the sigils blazing with power vast enough to defy comprehension.

  No. It can’t be worse than that thing.

  It saved you only for its own interest.

  The rebuttal was his own thought, sharp and merciless. He frowned, nails digging into his palms. That was true. And yet… the System itself seemed to herd him toward the capital. Which hand was guiding which? Who was using whom?

  He had no answer. Only the sense that whatever wanted him, he could not yet resist. Not today. Perhaps not for years.

  His gaze fell on the objects resting on the stone desk. He’d gone back into the vault, daring to take what once he had not. Master Velthar’s presence no longer lingered there. No whispers of guidance, no explanations. Only silence.

  Raime leaned his back against the wall, eyes fixed on one of the artifacts he had brought out. His fingers still twitched from the aftershocks of fear, but beneath the trembling ran another current—resolve.

  He was weak, yes. But not without means, the artifact will be a surprise for whoever tried more funny stuff on him.

  We’ll see who wants to fuck with my mind again after I’ve primed it.

  He let the dark thought pass, and started putting everything into a metallic box full of resilience enchantments he had found in the vault. It was a giant cube with every side just a bit longer than Thunk. Its only function was being a nearly unbreakable container for protecting the items inside. Raime still didn’t find anything resembling the spatial storages of the stories he read as a teenager. No spatial ring or bag of holding was in the vault, so he opted for something robust that could contain everything he felt capable of using.

  Ok, I got the artifacts, now I just need to secure food for some days and then I need to finish those thrice damned primary objectives. Who the fuck cares if I can bond with a beast here System? Even if I could form a genuine bond the beast would be too damn weak to help me, and the adults would never bond willingly so I’d have to take over their mind… what did I do to always get put into these shitty situations?

  Raime sighed, this was not a good train of thoughts, he needed to move, to act. He went to the bathroom to freshen up, then used the armour function for an extra cleaning session, after that he felt a bit better so he went to work.

  Exiting the temple he re-checked the map, he would need more or less a day and a half at medium speed just to cross the sea of grass. He performed tests already, and if he slowed down his consumption of energy he could maintain a balance in which he would meditate while levitating without taking from his reserves. In layman terms, unlimited hovering capabilities, but now the box would take some more energy to bring with him messing up his calculations.

  What if I just sit on the cube and make that fly instead of myself? It’s worth to see if I the energy expenditure is greater or lower… later though. Now it’s time to hunt.

  Raime exited the temple and went into the forest, the cube at his side like a mute shadow. The drag on his energy wasn’t that big, on his return he would try to use it as a seat and see what was better. The trees of Ithural rose tall and sharp-edged, their metallic wood twisting and forming strange, unnatural shapes, leaves dark against the bruised sky. He had learned to move here without the same awe that once slowed his steps; now these sights were nearly familiar. The echoes in the trees spoke to him, while at the same time his perception told him that every sound, every tremor in the undergrowth told a story.

  It was in this fashion that he proceeded deeper, he wanted the alien-boars. The creatures were crude, brutish, predictable—and most importantly, edible. He needed food for the journey. Crossing the sea of grass without it was a gamble he would not take. Who knows if on the other side he would find something to eat readily available as in the forest, and with his enhanced metabolism he didn’t want to take unnecessary risks, there was still a lot of space in the cube to store the meat.

  The first sign of prey came in the soil itself, gouged trenches left by tusks. Raime crouched, fingers brushing the damp earth. Fresh. His lips pressed thin.

  The levitating lever floated to his hand as if sensing his intent. His mind wrapped tight around it, less strained now than it had once been. All the practice had turned awkward pushes into an extension of his will. He did not grip the weapon, but it followed the angles of his thoughts as faithfully as his own muscles.

  Through the trees came the sound: low grunts, a rhythmic tearing of roots. Raime inhaled, let his focus stretch. Psychic awareness rippled outward like a net cast into dark water, threads brushing against warm life ahead.

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  Four boars, or what could be called boars in this place.

  He didn’t waste time. He didn’t know if he had hours or days before the retaliation of the eye. But of one thing he was sure, there will be. He didn’t believe for a second that the false god would leave him alone. So he went on with his current task.

  The first beast died before it noticed him. The blade of the Tetra Unum whipped forward with a thought, striking through its eye and into the skull with a crunch. The creature collapsed, its body trembling once before it stilled. The others squealed in outrage, stamping and charging in a spray of dirt and leaves.

  But after the first, the other blades and the spear came down on them and ended their life an instant later.

  When silence returned, Raime hovered above the corpses.

  Meat secured.

  He butchered them one by one, carving heavy strips of muscle and fat. Stowing them in waxed wrappings he had found in the temple for this very task. The rest he would leave for the scavengers of Ithural. Nothing here went to waste.

  But the hunt was not done.

  The venomous little aliens were next—chittering horrors that dripped poison with every bite. Small, and scarce in numbers, but the System required their deaths. He had hated them since his first encounter, the way one of them nearly killed him after getting the jump on him.

  It did not take long to find them. He knew the location of their hunting grounds.

  The first fell to one well-placed swing of Thunk, his weapon darting with cold precision. They dropped from branches, fangs bared, but he had learned to perceive them before they struck, to feel the scrape of their minds as his awareness brushed them. His Threads flared, pinning some mid-air, slamming them into stone until their bones cracked.

  By the time silence returned, he left a trail of broken bodies, chest rising slow and steady. The objective was already completed but the reward related to this task was based on his performance. And so he will hunt an adult version of these creatures. The same he did for the centipedes.

  And he found one less than half an hour later. It was honestly disappointing. He thought the adult were much more adept at hiding, and they were, but apparently his own progress in the perceptive field were so good that he could spot them easily a dozen meters before entering their field of view.

  The beasts were still lone predators, and he didn’t doubt that their venom would be even deadlier than before. But they were not much bigger than their younglings and one swift strike with his weapons was enough to kill them. After cleaning a part of the forest from their presence he went to another part of the forest.

  One more step. One more fucking hoop jumped through.

  But the last trial lingered—the beast he was supposed to bond with or slay.

  He knew where to find them. The forest seemed to hum differently around that species, an odd aura of quiet intelligence. They were predators, yes—razor-maw, strong—but unlike others, they did not hurl themselves upon him in blind hunger. He had once touched the mind of one of their young, and it had answered back, not in rage, but in caution first and then in something resembling friendship. And the adults had let him walk away.

  In this world, such restraint was rarer than gold.

  He came to them as the sun bled red through the treetops. The clearing smelled faintly of musk and old blood. Shapes moved in the shadows—big, six-legged forms. They watched him without lunging, without growls. Simply waiting.

  Raime floated to the ground, hand tightening on the lever. His chest felt tight.

  Bond… or kill.

  The System demanded closure. He could sense the invisible leash tightening. But his mind balked. To kill them was to waste something unique, something alien that had still chosen, in its way, to show restraint. He could bond by forcing his will into another creature’s mind, reshaping it until loyalty was no longer choice but compulsion. But he will not do it, not to them, especially not after having received that knowledge infusion about them as a reward. His own experience, together with that knowledge, made it so that he couldn’t find it in himself to hurt them. He wouldn’t hurt the only creatures that showed him that sliver of acceptance, of friendship.

  He clenched his jaw.

  One of the largest beasts padded forward, its head twisting slightly, not in submission, but in acknowledgment. Its eyes held his, bright and steady.

  The Rift never gave gifts freely. Whatever he chose here would mark him.

  He closed his eyes, stretched his awareness outward, brushing against the creature’s mind. No hunger or malice. Recognition, and watchfulness. A willingness to wait.

  He sent back images and memories of the young one he befriended before. In response the old drokhar made a guttural sound, a call, Raime could tell.

  After a few seconds another growl answered back. This one less deep, and Raime could feel the ground shake a little from the excited stomps of the young beast coming toward him.

  It was clearly still a juvenile compared to the one standing in front of him, but it had grown, and not little, now the beast stood taller than him at the shoulder.

  What the hell do they feed you for getting this kind of growth in a bit more than a week? Or maybe, the environment here is just so hostile that they evolved to accelerate growth. Similar to how zebras newborn can run as soon as they exit the womb to escape predators.

  The brush parted with a rush of sound, interrupting his thoughts, and there it was—the youngling. Its gait was clumsy with enthusiasm, claws digging deep furrows in the soil as it bounded forward. When it saw him, a cascade of feelings slammed into Raime—excitement, recognition, joy so raw and unfiltered it nearly knocked the breath from his chest.

  The beast’s mind was a storm of images: their first meeting, the moment of contact, the memory of their play-fighting. Then new memories layered on top, hunts it had taken alone, triumphs, the raw pride of survival. Now it wanted to show him—look how strong I’ve grown, look what I can do.

  The wave of warmth that hit Raime left him stunned. His heart clenched hard, swelling with an emotion he had almost forgotten how to feel. In this cursed place of survival, predators, and endless manipulation, here was something pure. Friendship, in its primal form. Acceptance.

  The young drokhar circled him, tail lashing, brushing against him as though he might vanish if it didn’t touch him enough. It lowered itself suddenly, chest to the ground, rump raised high—a universal invitation to play. The sheer force of its eagerness broke a laugh out of Raime, raw and unguarded, surprising even himself.

  “Alright,” he said softly, aloud and across the thread. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

  The beast bounded away, then spun and charged a tree, ramming it with a shoulder and shaking loose a shower of leaves. Through their bond Raime felt its pride, its insistence—see, see how strong I’ve become!

  Raime’s chest ached, but this time from joy. He had been so long without it that the flood of positive emotion left him dizzy, trembling in a way different from fear. For a brief moment, Ithural did not feel like a prison anymore.

  They then fought and shoved each other, Raime was much stronger now, he could push the beast without striking with Thunk. Using his telekinesis coating his own body he avoided getting hurt and hurting the beast in turn. When the play slowed, Raime reached out, resting a hand against the beast’s hard carapace. He let the thought pass from him without masks, without calculation:

  I’ll have to leave this place soon. But before I go… do you want to be my friend? This way, even when I’m gone, you’ll remember me. And I’ll remember you.

  Raime put all his money on this strategy, for one, he didn’t want to hurt any of these beasts, and on the other, the offer was genuine. He just hoped that the drokhar’s feeling were strong enough to consent to a bond of this kind. The System didn’t specify the type of bond, he was guessing but if the objective was considered complete in this way, he could depart with a light heart. He was praying that it was not required of him to kill or enslave any of these creatures.

  The young drokhar answered instantly, flooding him with images. The clearing. The hunts. The joy of his presence. Acceptance tinged with sadness, a deep wish to follow, to run at his side, to fight and play together beneath skies untainted by the Rift.

  Raime’s throat tightened. His hand lingered on the beast’s side, unable to form words.

  But before he could send his reply, a low rumble shook the clearing. The elder drokhar had stepped forward, gaze stern, voice carrying authority that pressed not just on the air but into Raime’s mind. A guttural command rolled like thunder, and the youngling froze.

  Raime felt the protest rise in the young beast’s mind—frustration, annoyance, the edge of rebellion—but it was tempered by a lifetime of obedience. The bond of family held firm. The image came then, vivid and bittersweet: the youngling watching Raime leave, sadness like a weight in its chest… followed by another vision, of its body grown massive, stronger, towering even higher than its elder. The two of them meeting again, side by side, departing this forest and exploring what lay beyond.

  Raime exhaled slowly, a smile pulling at his lips despite the ache in his heart. Relief washed through him. This was not an end. It was a promise.

  He stepped back, giving the young beast one last brush of his thoughts—gratitude, warmth, happiness. And a promise.

  I’ll come back. Friend.

  The youngling pressed its snout against his shoulder in answer, a final surge of affection and resolve. With it an invisible line stretched between them, nothing like the tight bond he had with Thunk, something more alive, something still weak, that will have to be nurtured, but warm. Raime’s thoughts were jumbled for a moment. He felt sadness at the formation of this bond, the circumstances forced something that for him and the beast was important, something precious. Still he felt joy at the prospect of having made a friend in this place, and the feeling of unadulterated joy he was receiving managed to sweep away his thoughts about the completed objective and made him just enjoy the moment. After a minute, reluctantly, the young drokhar retreated to the side of its elder.

  Raime stood in the clearing, chest light after the experience. The Rift’s shadows had not lifted, but a spark burned within him now, a reminder that even here, friendship and joy could exist here.

  It worked, I felt the System acknowledge the objective completion… now only the crossing of the sea of grass remains.

  The day was coming to an end, the light was fading and the shadows getting longer. The drokhars pair made a sound in unison, a farewell, while retreating to their burrow. Raime too turned back, toward the temple.

  Probably for the last time… he thought

  But when he reached inside of him, when he felt that fragile string warming him, the weight on his shoulders felt just a little lighter than before.