Chapter 121: Horn
Four days pass inside the cave.
Four days of darkness, careful decisions at every bend, natural traps that almost catch us more than once.
Lola stops complaining about the dark on the second day—starts adapting to it instead. That surprises me and worries me in equal measure. Kids shouldn’t adjust this well.
Rhayne keeps the Cloaked Cape active almost the whole time, conserving her energy, becoming part of the walls when we rest. Oliver takes point with the torch without ever being asked. The four of us learn to walk in silence.
I learn that silence in the dark is the only language that doesn’t attract things.
On the fourth day, we find a huge gallery. The ceiling climbs past the reach of the torch. And when I take my third step into the chamber, my boots knock against something that isn’t stone.
I lower the torch.
The floor is covered in shining stones. Hundreds of them. Spread across a wide swath of the cave like scattered seeds. Some the size of a fingernail, others bigger than an egg. I crouch and pick one up. Turn it in the light.
I recognize it instantly. Leviathan Bead. The same rare currency I used to buy passage to Elisser. And it isn’t alone—there are other gemstones mixed in. Deep blues, crystalline greens, a white one that glows on its own without needing the torch at all.
"The Goberingei was collecting these," I say quietly.
Oliver steps in beside me. "Like a crow?"
"Or like a king... anyway we got lucky."
There’s no Leviathan Bead in this biome. Boris told me they only exist around the tower. Which means either the Goberingei traveled there, or this cave connects to the tower somewhere I haven’t seen.
Neither option sits comfortably in my head.
Not to mention the worrying fact that I haven’t received any XP notification from the Goberingei.
I pocket fifty Leviathan Beads, and Oliver handles the rarer-looking gems.
Lola grabs three blues for herself without asking.
Rhayne takes nothing.
Oliver mutters that what I just scooped up is worth more than everything he’s carried in his entire life.
Internally, I agree.
Fifty Beads is enough capital to negotiate with Boris for months.
At the far end of the gallery, a thread of light drops straight down from a fissure in the ceiling. Real light. Starlight from the false sky of Lost Ark.
We reach the fissure and I look up. Fifteen meters of stacked rock between us and the outside. A sequence of small chambers connected by openings even smaller. Millennia of debris, some loose, some pressed into place by its own weight.
The gap is too narrow to crawl through. Nobody clears this without breaking a path.
I think for a second. The only tool we have capable of breaking stacked stone without bringing the rest of the cave down on our heads is Lola, because Oliver can’t control his hammer strength.
I kneel in front of her. She’s already holding a Scale, instinctively.
"You can control the blast, right? Like you did with the Lunaria fruit."
She thinks. "Big or small?"
"Small. Very small. Just enough to break a rock the size of a watermelon."
She scrunches her nose. "Is a watermelon big or small?"
"Bigger than your head. Smaller than Oliver’s."
"Oliver has a big head."
"Focus, Lola."
She nods. Closes her eyes. The Scale in her hand starts pulsing differently—slower, more contained. She’s metering the energy from the inside.
I walk her through the plan. I point at the rocks that need to come out. She presses the Scale against each one and tunes the yield. I give her references from Earth that she knows.
Oliver and I clear the rubble between detonations. Rhayne stands at the gallery entrance covering our backs in case something deeper in the cave comes to investigate the noise.
First try.
I ask for a watermelon. She calibrates. The blast is perfect—the rock cracks into four clean pieces and we haul them out.
Second try.
I ask for a chair. She calibrates wrong. The blast comes out way too big. The shock wave bounces off the walls of the fissure and throws me backward hard enough that if Oliver hadn’t caught me by the shoulder at the last second, I’d have gone headfirst into a drop behind us.
Lola is quiet for a beat. "Sorry." Flat. A log entry, nothing more.
"All good."
Third try.
I ask for a basketball. She calibrates short. The rock doesn’t even crack. We waste a Scale.
Fourth try.
I ask for a big cooking pot. She calibrates. A two-thousand-pound stone splits cleanly into many manageable pieces.
We keep going.
I lose track of time. Lola gets better with every attempt—each error sharpens the next. Her eyes stay completely shut, focused on the energy she’s metering out. Between detonations she asks me about the sizes of random objects so she can calibrate them in her head.
"Book? Bottle? Shoe?"
I answer every one.
We work for hours. Blast, clear, blast, clear.
"Oh," Lola says, surprised. "I got a skill."
"What did you get?"
"Candy Bullet. It says I can shoot candies and control the pop."
This is really good for the team...
"That’s good. Well done, little bear. And thank you."
Finally the last stone comes out.
I see direct light for the first time in four days.
I check my OXI and Scales before climbing.
[OXI: 1,589 / 1,600]
[Scales: 355]
Enough. We consumed some in the past four days, but we’re fine.
I go up first. Check the perimeter. Safe.
I pull Lola up after me. Then Rhayne. Oliver climbs last.
We emerge on the side of a mountain. The desert stretches below us. The false sky of Lost Ark is locked in its eternal night cycle, stars burning in patterns I don’t recognize from Earth.
I breathe deep. The air out here tastes like freedom after four days of stone breath.
And then I hear it.
Far away. Very far. At the edge of hearing.
The ship horn of Lost Ark.
I freeze.
Rhayne looks at me without understanding. Lola looks at me with her eyes wide open. Oliver looks at the horizon in the direction of the sound.
"Oliver. How long on foot to Lost Ark?"
"Without Ferredons? Hours. Some of them."
The horn sounds a second time.
I start running.